


Tending Towards Chaos

by Argonautical



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Athletics vs. BakeSoc, Brainwashing, Ensemble Cast, Everybody loves Ana, F/F, First Love, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Multi, Pharmercy, Slow Burn, Widowmaker corruption arc, Widowtracer, probably more dramatic than actual irl university, seriously don't expect anybody to hook up in chapter one, social media shenanigans, tiny gay Tracer is gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:55:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 78,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argonautical/pseuds/Argonautical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lena dreams of getting out of her council estate and being a pilot. Amélie is running from the shadow of her boyfriend's mysterious murder. Fareeha's overachieving mum won't let her join the army out of school. Lúcio wants to save his home and Angela wants to save the lives she couldn't last time.</p><p>Somehow they've all ended up at Overwatch University.</p><p>The second law of thermodynamics states that the chaos in a closed system can only ever increase.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Three Arrivals

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm super into Overwatch at the moment. I started writing this pretty much the day I realised AO3 was now the 'thing', and I've been massively inspired by the great community here. If you want an excellent and definitely lighter-in-tone Pharmercy uni AU, I highly recommend The Best Years of Our Lives by caesurae.  
> There are some amazing and delicious Widowmaker redemption fics on here. But they got me thinking: what about a Widowmaker corruption fic? Set in a modern-day British university? With drama and romance and all the stupid things freshers do?  
> Why the hell not?  
> A/N edit: Since it's relevant to the whole fic, I'm running a competition! Hidden in this fic is an Overwatch canon Easter Egg. I'm not sure if it's super obvious or incredibly obscure, but I am offering a lavish grand prize for the first person to spot it and comment. The prize will be a one-shot fic of any Overwatch pairing/prompt/situation etc done by me for you. There is also another competition for the same prize mentioned in later chapters but I won't post it here because it doesn't make sense until later on :)
> 
> Hopefully, the most unbelievable thing in this chapter is that Lena catches a TFL bus that arrives on time on a Sunday afternoon.

The nearest train station, it turned out, was nowhere near the university itself. Consultation of a weather-beaten bus timetable informed a girl laden with suitcases that the next bus to campus was in fifteen minutes.

Lena grumbled and huffed, sweaty in the September sunshine. She supposed that most students arrived by car, ferried to their new halls of residence by doting parents. She had the doting parents, but the doting parents did not have a car, and thus, public transport it was. Not the most glamorous way to arrive.

She sat on the not-quite-bum-sized seats of the bus stop and gazed around. This part of South London was not exactly picturesque, but then again, neither was the council estate near Heathrow she’d come from. A light breeze blew burger wrappers and empty drinks bottles across the pavement. With a faint smacking sound, a flyer hit her foot and stuck fast.

Lena, always curious, bent to pick it up. She saw the logo and smiled. This was a good omen.

 

_London Sightseeing Guidebook Stop #204: Overwatch Munitions Factory_

_This vast factory complex churned out the weapons of World Wars One and Two, producing a wide variety of ammunition from simple bullets to huge shells and bombs. Staff and their families lived on site, ate at the factory’s many cafés and restaurants, and even played tennis and swam in its leisure facilities!_

_When the demand for the weapons of war faded in the 1950s, the factory closed its doors. Fifteen years later it opened them – not for workers, but for students. The site was converted into a university and funded by government plans to create an institute of science, medicine, and innovation. Overwatch University has never been far off the top of the Times Educational Supplement rankings since!_

_Take time out of your busy sightseeing day to soak up the atmosphere of this strange place. Shiny new glass towers rise up over the original red-brick factory buildings. Students live in halls of residence in King’s Row, a town within a city, just like the workers of old._

_Guided tours of the campus and all its historical significance can be booked from the Visitors’ Office in the Atlas Building, Ground Floor, and cost £5 per person._

Lena ran her fingers over the glossy flyer, her heart fluttering in her chest. Overwatch University. Here she was at last.

It hadn’t been fun, or easy. Dyslexics from council estates don’t often get into top-ranked universities, but Lena Oxton was considered even by those who didn’t like her as ‘too damn keen’. When she wanted something, she worked and worked until she got it. And she had really, really wanted to get into Overwatch.

The bus pulled up and she pocketed the flyer for good luck. She held her Oyster Card against the reader and the light flashed green, but told her she only had thirty pence left on it. She thanked her lucky stars, but worry gripped her stomach. She had twenty pounds on her – a good luck gift that her younger brothers had clubbed together to get her – but that was it until somehow she got some money.

The trip didn’t take long and she was dropped off outside the huge, wrought iron gates. They still said ‘Overwatch Munitions’, the iron shaped into huge letters. A towering redbrick wall obscured her view of what lay beyond.

Everything happened very fast after that. Smiling students in red jumpers handed her maps and guides and steered her inside, carrying her two suitcases and large hiking backpack. They took a look over the letter the university had sent her a month ago and ferried her down a long paved street lined with terraced houses.

“You’ve been allocated number… oh dear.”

The red-jumper stopped outside a house with a brass ‘39’ on the door. One of the upstairs windows was open and the sound of techno music was blasting through.

“Really, already? Has he not read the conduct guidelines?” The red-jumper tutted and handed several keys to Lena. “Front door, back door, and your room key. Replacements cost £50 because all the locks have to be changed. So… don’t lose them.”

With that stellar piece of life advice, the red-jumper jogged off in the direction of a lost-looking boy and his parents, leaving Lena with her heavy suitcases at the door of her new home.

She gazed up at the thin four-story terrace. She felt kind of silly, but couldn’t help thinking it was so much better than her block of council flats. It looked grand to her. She’d never lived somewhere grand before.

The inside was less than grand. A thin, dim hallway opened onto a large but shabby living room filled with mismatched furniture and a dusty television. The kitchen was small and grimy, though it had all of the things she guessed a kitchen needed.

The fob on her key said ‘Room 13’, which she sincerely hoped was not too unlucky. Room 13 was on the very top floor, along with rooms ten, eleven and twelve. However thin the houses looked, they were actually very long, and there was a small bathroom and shower too.

Mr. Blaring Techno, it turned out, lived in room twelve.

Lena gritted her teeth and decided that it wasn’t going to kill her while she unpacked. Soon the small bedroom was much more welcoming, full of her own personal touches. Posters of fighter jets and sports cars on the walls, Union Jack bedcovers, the desk set up with her battered old laptop, monitor and Xbox 360. To anybody else, these were just the things that teenagers had, but to Lena, they represented months and months of hard work. She’d spent a whole summer locked in a sweltering Beureau de Change to buy the laptop. The monitor she’d bought from a friend with the proceeds from a Christmas Holiday job delivering post. Her shabby Xbox, though on its last legs, was the result of a whole year working evenings and weekends cleaning the airport.

Everybody Lena knew worked at Heathrow. Her estate was right next to it. Everybody knew how it worked: if you needed the money, you got a job there for a bit. They told themselves it was just temporary, that they were saving up to move into London, to travel, to go to university. But somehow they never did any of those things. They stayed on that estate and worked in the airport until they had kids themselves, who grew up and started working in the airport. It was an awful meat machine of lost hopes and destroyed dreams.

But Lena was different. She stood there, in her new room at her first-choice university, and beamed at everything. She didn’t care about the peeling paint, the patch of mould in the corner or the cracked windowpane. She’d gotten out. When everybody else had consented to work in the airport, forever grounded, Lena Oxton had wanted only one thing. To be one of those select few in their sort-of-military uniforms, golden bands on their cuffs, sauntering through security. Every aeroplane that rumbled overhead only made her ache more and more for the sky.

She was going to be a pilot.

A new spring in her step, she knocked on the door of room twelve. Nobody answered, the music probably too loud. She knocked again. No response. Lena lingered for a while before deciding that nah, it wasn’t rude to barge into her new flatmate’s room unannounced.

The first thing she noticed were the frogs. They were everywhere. Cuddly frogs on the bed, frog slippers on his feet, frog headphones around his neck. A boy with dreadlocks was sitting back on his desk chair, eyes closed, seemingly in rapture to the booming music. Every few seconds he would grope with one hand to the mixing console that took up most of his desk and twiddle a knob or adjust a slider.

“Hello?” Lena tried, but the boy might as well have been deaf.

“’Ello!” She practically yelled. He cracked one eye open, saw her, and closed it again. Then he did the most ridiculous double-take, falling off his chair in surprise.

“Meu Deus!” He cried as he crashed to the floor. He scrambled up and paused the music, the headphones around his neck slipping off.

“I’m so sorry!” He said in a thick accent. “I didn’t think anybody else would be here so early!”

“It’s all right, mate.” She grinned and offered him a hand. He shook it weirdly, as if unsure of the occaision that merited something as grand as a handshake. “I’m Lena.”

“Lúcio Correia dos Santos.” He grinned, his teeth very straight and white against his dark skin. “But you, amiga, can call me Lúcio.”

“I was planning to.” Lena said, already having forgotten the second half of the long name he had said very fast in Portugese. “I’m in room thirteen.”

“So we are, what is the word… flatmates?” His grin widened. “Excelente! We will be friends, yes?”

“Of course!”

“Brilliant!”

Once you got past the fact that his room was Night of the Living Frogs and his awful taste in techno music, Lúcio was probably the best she could have gotten roomed with. He was almost as enthusiastic as she was, and for the next hour there wasn’t a single quiet second as both of them gabbled excitedly. It was his first time in England and Lena’s first time away from home, so they had some common ground. Mainly: how on earth were they going to survive.

“They all gonna know us at this house. Trinta e noves. Thirty-niners, yes? Lúcio throws good parties.”

“Loud parties.”

“Good parties.” He smirked. “And I bet Lena likes a good party, huh?”

“I’m on… a tight budget, at the mo.” She sidestepped the question.

“Pah, sem problemas. It’s the Interpush, after all.”

It took Lena a second to sort out which word didn’t fit.

“What’s an ‘Interpush’?”

His brown eyes widened. “You don’t know? How come? Overwatch is famous now for the Interpush. But I suppose you’re British, yeh? Wouldn’t’ve heard it.”

Lúcio rummaged in his desk drawers and found a glossy brochure.

 

_Overwatch University International Programme_

“D’ya wanna give me a York notes version?” She asked, wary of the thick brochure.

“Overwatch did this huge advertising thing for International students. Best and brightest, all welcome at subsidised rates. See, normally, it costs muito dollars to come study in England for us. But Overwatch says, ‘nah, come to us, we’ll give you good rate if you’re smart’. So this year, I think there will be many, many International student from all over the world. The push for Internationals. InterPush.”

“But what does that have to do with throwing parties with no money?” Lena asked, still perplexed.

“Well, it still costs a lot to come to England, and no loans either. So all the kids coming from abroad will be rich. Not me, though – I’ve come on a scholarship. But you and be, Lena, we’ll be drinking champagne every night from all of the sons and daughters of the world’s wealthiest!”

They toasted enthusiastically to this prospect with cheap own-brand beer Lúcio had bought at the corner shop.

Their other housemates filtered in as the day wore on, some accompanied by parents, others by their drivers or, in the case of one girl, a stern-looking woman in an immaculate grey trouser suit. This wouldn’t have been odd, except that the woman had an eyepatch, which made her look like a pirate crew’s accountant.

The girl behind her was very pretty, with smooth, dark skin and shiny black hair. She looked very sulky though.

“Yes, mum, I understand.” They heard her grumbling as her mum helped her move into room eleven across the hall.

“And Fareeha, please, have a little fun, okay? Go to a few parties. Meet a few people. I didn’t pull all those strings to get you in here for you to lock yourself in your room all year.”

“Parties aren’t really my thing.”

“Well, make them your thing. You’re eighteen! Gods above, when I was eighteen, I was doing all sorts –”

“Mum! I don’t want to hear about what you did in the seventies!”

“Suit yourself.” Through Lúcio’s door, which was open just a crack, they saw trouser-suit pirate mum shrug. “I will hear from Winston if you’re not turning up to lectures, young lady.”

“Of course I’ll turn up.”

“Uh huh.” Pirate mum was supremely unconvinced. “Well, I should get back to the office. I have to plan which photos of mangled bodyparts I’m going to put in my inaugural lecture tomorrow.”

“You’re weird.”

“I love you too, Fareeha.” Pirate mum and her daughter exchanged an awkward hug, and then Fareeha was alone, standing in her doorway looking lost. After a furious whispered conversation, Lena and Lúcio decided they should casually walk out and introduce themselves.

This did not go to plan, as both of them went for the door first and fell arse over elbow out onto the landing. They couldn’t’ve looked more like they’d been listening at the door if they’d tried.

“Afternoon.” Lena gave a jaunty wave and sprang to her feet. “Lúcio, mate, you need to complain about that carpet. It’s a trip hazard.”

“I know you were listening at the door.” Fareeha said flatly, arms crossed. “The crack wasn’t that small.”

“Oh. Well, we got that out of the way at least.” Lena beamed and offered her hand, which Fareeha shook with a very firm grip. She was much taller than both Lena and Lúcio and though she was wearing a loose t-shirt and jeans, gave the impression of being very muscular.

“Lena.”

“Fareeha.” Lena noticed that despite her rather stiff manner and plain clothing, her eye make-up was perfect and her clothes all designer. She wondered where pirate mum fitted into the whole ‘Interpush’ thing.

Lúcio introduced himself. Fareeha wasn’t as easy to hold a conversation with, truth be told. She set up her room while they chatted about what courses they were doing.

“Sound Engineering.” Lúcio smiled, miming twisting knobs and tapping at a keyboard. “I’m gonna make sweet music someday. Be a big star.”

“What about you, Fareeha?” Efforts to include their frosty new flatmate were becoming rather cumbersome.

“Aerospace engineering.”

Lena let out a squeal of delight. “Really? Me too! What are the chances? Have you looked over the book list? The course guide? I’m really interested in –”

Fareeha finally entered the conversation. They eagerly talked about their chosen subject while she put the finishing touches to her room – a pull-up bar, some free weights and a large Arabic wall scroll that she informed them read ‘I will not waste this opportunity’. The rest of it was very plain and functional.

“Beer?” Lúcio offered one of the cans to her. Fareeha looked at it indecisively.

“I don’t drink.” She decided.

“Of course you do. Your mum told you to have some fun. That’s parent-sanctioned drinking! And you can’t have a mum who’s cooler than you, that’s just not allowed.”

As it turned out, Fareeha did drink after that. And, for a five-foot-eleven wall of sinewy muscle and inspirational quotes, she could not hold her alcohol at all.

That night all of the members of number thirty-nine met together to get to know each other. Lena met so many new names and faces and had a so many of Lúcio’s infinite beers that she might as well not have met anybody at all.

At one in the morning, boy in a cowboy hat with a haversack slung over his back entered the house. He looked frankly terrified to see twelve people sitting staring at him, drunk, in the living room. He tripped on the carpet and fell hat-first up the stairs. Everybody cheered. Ten minutes later with a carpet burn on his nose, he came downstairs with a bottle of bourbon and introduced himself as Jesse McCree in room ten. Everybody cheered again. Then he poured them all a shot of bourbon, and scored the loudest cheer of the night.

Somewhere in her tipsy haze, Lena went upstairs to pee and caught herself staring out of the window at the campus, bright and shining in the moonlight. Excitement and fear and all sorts of feelings she couldn’t quite name swirled around in her chest.

When the luminous blue dial on her wristwatch read two in the morning, she decided she really had to go to sleep. Her first lecture was the next morning, after all.

A dark car rolled down King’s Row and stopped outside number thirty-eight opposite. Lena was fast asleep by now, but stirred when the door slammed. A lone female figure got out, carrying several suitcases, and walked up through the house until she alighted in the top front room, just like the one Lena was in on the opposite side of the road. The car left, but the woman didn’t turn the light on and unpack. She didn’t accept an invitation from one of her new housemates to come downstairs and join their game of drunken twister.

The girl opposite closed and locked her window and drew the curtains firmly shut.

 

-0-

 

Amélie arrived very late at night, chauffeured from the airport in an inconspicuous car with tinted windows. She watched disinterestedly as London rolled past in all its squalor and splendour, blocks of sad grey flats and breath-taking architectural triumphs. She couldn’t find it in her to appreciate any of it.

The driver dropped her off outside the tall, slim house. It was identical to the others in its row but for small defects in the paint or brickwork. Identical was good. You could blend into identical.

Her father had requested the keys sent ahead. Any undue attention around her arrival should be avoided. She unlocked the front door and pulled her baggage inside.

The parlour was alive with pop music and drunken shouts. Teenagers played twister in a space cleared amidst the furniture, contorted into uncomfortable positions. She walked past quickly, hoping nobody saw her.

The key in her hand said thirteen, and judging by the layout of the house, this would be on the very top floor. An old fear twisted in her gut, but she suppressed it. Of course she could make the trip up four flights of stairs. She was fit. She could do it.

Her room was small, but adequate. Nothing like the opulence of her bedroom back home, but also not a prison cell. Small mercies, she supposed. It did not take long to unload her suitcases, and soon the daggy student dig was transformed into at least a decent facsimile of French minimalist design. Amélie enjoyed comfort, but not clutter. The only frippery she allowed herself was a photograph, framed elegantly in silver. It showed a young, beautiful woman with long black hair holding hands with a tan-skinned boy by the seaside. They both beamed at the camera, and sat around them were three people. The two on the girl’s side could only be her parents: her mother, grey-haired but retaining the lithe, elegant look of a retired ballerina. Her father with sparkling amber eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard. The tawny-haired mother of the boy was in the process of putting her book down for the photograph, and her husband was holding the camera.

Amélie sat stock still and stared longingly at the picture. Emotions threatened to overwhelm her, bubbling up in her chest and reaching a bottleneck in her throat. She felt herself choking with them.

 _Remember what the doctor told you, Amélie_ , she chided herself. At once she recalled the office of Dr. Griffe. She sat in the armchair she always felt she would be swallowed by, and the kindly psychiatrist coached her through her exercises. She let her breathing slow, her whole body loosen, her mind go blank. There was only the rhythm of her breathing and the counting.

_Une, deux, trois, quatre, cinq…_

The girl sat in the dark for a long time trying to regain control. One of the revellers downstairs burst in and asked her if she wanted to join in, but she only had to throw him an icy glare and he retreated. He had interrupted her. The count had to begin again.

_Une, deux, trois, quatre, cinq…_

Eventually, Amélie woke as if from a trance. She felt clear and in control, the overwhelming emotions banished from her mind. After a heartbeat’s hesitation, she took the photograph off the desk and placed it in a drawer. Though she slid under the grey silk covers of her bed, sleep did not come easily. She tossed and turned and woke sweating several times, convinced that she could hear sirens approaching once again.


	2. The Cake Slow-Clap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena and Fareeha attend their first lecture and sign their lives away to a shuttlecock-related cult. Amélie, in attempting furiously to go unnoticed, attracts the attention of a demonic third-year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doing a double-post to get the ball rolling and give people a better idea of the direction of this fic. Warning for descriptions of violent war casualties. Also, Ana is a BAMF. Forgive my awful understanding of how tweets work, I am not a twatterer.

“I SAID, DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE AERONAUTICS ORIENTATION IS?”

Lena might as well have taken the time to tattoo any relevant questions on her face for all the good shouting did over the blaring noise. The original, vast factory building had become the university’s student union, and the booming acoustics made the frantic cries and din of chattering only louder.

The whole Atlas Building was stuffed full for the activities fair, which would be happening today and tomorrow. Clubs, societies, sports teams, campaign groups, political parties and club promoters had packed the building with stalls. First year students roamed around the maze, wide-eyed, clutching each other for dear life. Every so often a club member would lunge out from behind their stall and snare a vulnerable fresher.

“Ever wanted to join rock climbing?”

“Find your cause in Greenpeace!”

“Come over! We’ve got free samples! Curry club has a place for every palate!”

If you were interested in anything – anything at all – there were at least ten other people at Overwatch who were equally as interested and had formed a club based upon this mutual interest. From Archery and American Football to Science Fiction and Poker, you were spoiled for choice.

Unfortunately, Lena and Fareeha were currently five minutes late for their Aeronautics orientation. Their course letters had said that it would be in the Atlas Building, but it was absolutely huge. They’d made the mistake of edging into the crowd at the fair to ask somebody and promptly been swept up in the mad crush.

Lena had already inadvertently signed up for Chamber Choir, Student Radio and the Russian Students’ Alliance. A group of bodybuilders in string vests sipping protein shakes were sizing up Fareeha, whose crisp white blouse and shorts utterly failed to hide the fact that she was ripped. Hella ripped. How had Lena and Lúcio not noticed quite how muscular she was last night? Lena bet that Fareeha could crush a man’s head like a watermelon between her thighs. Thoughts on this subject had somewhat distracted her all morning.

“We need to get out!” Lena tried desperately to signal as a parade of marching band members ploughed through the crowd, scattering freshers. Poor Jesse McCree failed to realise in time, and was knocked out cold by the trombone player. Luckily enough, a couple of medical students advertising St. John’s Ambulance volunteering were on hand to drag him out of the way and offer an icepack.

Eventually Fareeha decided enough was enough. She turned on her heels and proceeded to push her way through, Lena darting along in her wake. As luck would have it, they exited the crowd next to a staircase that had a sign next to it.

_Tekhartha Mondatta Memorial Lecture Theatre - >_

“That’s it!” Lena jabbed her finger excitedly at her letter. “That’s where we’re meant to go!”

They hurried upstairs and slipped through the doors into the back of a cavernous lecture theatre, row upon row of seats and desks with two huge projector screens and a whiteboard at the front. The professor had his back turned, writing something on the whiteboard.

“Just in time.” Fareeha hissed.

“Subtle now. Secret Squirrel. We’ll just shimmy into these seats at the back here…”

Lena’s hopes of sneaking in unnoticed shattered as though hit by a sledgehammer. The fold-down seats they had chosen gave two loud, awful squeaks on rusty hinges. They might as well have come in escorted by that marching band.

“Good morning to our latecomers.” The professor called up to them. Lena blushed guiltily. He was a bulky, middle-aged man, and one of those men with the misfortune to be simply covered in hair. His dark brown hair covered his head, and melded seamlessly into a full beard, which somehow just continued down his neck and disappeared under the collar of his shirt. His exposed arms were just as hairy. Even in small, lopsided square glasses he gave the impression of being, as Lena’s fairly sweary inner monologue would have put it ‘not somebody to fuck with’.

“As I was saying. My name is Professor Winston. I am the principal lecturer for the first-year Aerospace Engineering degree. You will also have other lecturers, notably Professor Vaswani, who teaches the ever-popular ‘Maths for Dumb Engineers’ course.”

A ripple of giggling crossed the room.

“I expect complete – and prompt –” He eyeballed Lena and Fareeha, “Attendance and completion of assignments. You’ll only get out of this course what you’re willing to put it. Now, for a timetable overview…”

He clicked his remote and a powerpoint presentation flickered into life. Winston took them through their schedule for the semester, and Lena was delighted to see that they had Wednesdays and Thursdays off. Monday looked awful, though. Nine am double lectures, then Maths with Professor Vaswani, then a short break for lunch before ‘practical workshop’ all afternoon.

Fareeha took diligent and detailed notes in miniscule handwriting next to her, but Lena’s pen wandered. Her excitement was almost unbearable. She wanted to do it all, right now. Even Maths for Dumb Engineers. Even the midterm assessments Winston was talking about, and especially the end of year projects. She wanted to join every club that was currently advertising in the foyer of the Atlas Building. She realised that she had punctured her pad of paper by pressing too hard with her pen, but couldn’t bring herself to relax. Her whole body was tight with anticipation.

The hour and a half passed too quickly. Soon they had all their course details, library logins, bus timetables and pre-reading for tomorrow’s lecture: Introduction to Fluid physics and thermodynamics.

“Well, I won’t keep you from the melee in the foyer any longer.” Professor Winston smiled and shooed them all away. “Except for you too, my latecomers. Come here, please.”

Lena’s stomach dropped. She thought about bolting, melting into the crowd of chattering students leaving through the nearby door, but Fareeha’s strong hand gripped her arm. Was she going to get chastised? A warning for lateness? Extra homework?

Up close, Winston was even broader and taller. She wasn’t sure how much was muscle and how much was fat, but at least this close she could confirm he was mostly hair. Probably more hair than muscle.

“Fareeha.” He said tenderly. He drew the girl into a back-slapping hug, which was not at all what Lena was expecting. She realised with a start that this was what pirate accountant mum had been saying: _“I will hear from Winston if you’re not turning up to lectures, young lady.”_

“Winston.”

“Late, to the very first lecture? What am I to tell Ana when she corners me in the staff room?”

“We got caught in the crush of the activities fair.” Lena said at once, leaping to Fareeha’s defence. She wasn’t about to let her new friend get in trouble for something that wasn’t her fault.

“Ah, well, if that’s the case…” Winston had oddly misty hazel eyes behind his glasses that now looked fondly on Fareeha. “I’m pleased to see that Fareeha has made a friend.”

“She’s just my flatmate.”

“Oi. The Professor says you’re my friend, you’re my friend. No getting out of it, love.” Lena grinned and patted Fareeha on the back. The fiery glare she got in return did not dampen her spirits. “But am I right in figuring out that your mum’s one of the staff here?”

“She’s a lecturer in the medical school.” Fareeha muttered. “But please don’t tell anybody. I don’t want to be judged against her, or have any students who don’t like her hating me too.”

“Come now, Fareeha, what student could hate your mother? Her big trauma lecture to the freshman medical students is happening right now, and you should see the tweets.”

Winston crossed to his laptop.

“Athena, refresh twitter feed.” He said to it. A female voice responded.

“Of course, Winston.”

Winston noticed Lena looking dumbfounded at the computer.

“I don’t have very good eyesight,” he explained, tapping his glasses, “Cataracts, you see. So I have a voice recognition program on all of my tech, to help me out.”

In the bottom right of his screen, a little blue ‘A’ bobbed up and down. “Would you like me to read out the tweets, Winston?”

“I think Fareeha can read them herself.”

 

**Singhstar**

(@savandersinghss)

can I get a round of applause for this lady? Shes like badass pirate doctor Rambo #TraumAmari amirite?

 

**Christian Bayless**

(@bayboi92)

@savandersingss you’re in Amari’s lecture too? Bro she’s so sick, that pic of her sewing that dude’s arm back on #TraumAmari #gladwereonthesameside #sheskindoffitalso ??

 

**Xx-Al-Farookie-xX**

(@vaguedinosaursounds)

Am I the only one in #overwatchunifreshers #TraumAmari who wishes they hadn’t eaten a big breakfast? She doesn’t hold back with the pics does she

 

**Mirembe**

(@mirembermefondly)

Just <3 this <3 badass <3 lady <3 doctor <3 <3 <3 such an inspiration #TraumAmari

 

“See?” Winston said cheerfully, beaming at Fareeha. “I’ve known your mother for years, Fareeha, and I know she’s a great lecturer. You don’t have to be worried.”

“What is that hashtag? ‘she’s kind of fit also ??’ – what the hell does that mean? I’m going to find this Christian Bayless and teach him that nobody disrespects my mother!”

Fareeha was already halfway up the lecture theatres stairs, fists clenched. Lena moved to follow her, but Winston stopped her with a gently tap on the arm.

“I didn’t get your name, my dear.”

“Lena. Lena Oxton.” They shook hands. Lena suppressed a shiver at the carpets-worth of thick, bristly hair covering his fingers.

“Lena, then. Watch out for Fareeha for me, will you? She’s a good girl, but she’s got all sorts of ideas about running off to join the army like her mother. Ana – Professor Amari – just wants to keep her safe and get her an education.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“Good to hear. Now, off with you. I’m sure you’ve got the Financial society and the Knitting Union to join or some such nonsense.”

Lena grinned at him and jogged up to join Fareeha. She had a job to do, and she was going to do it damn well. She’d make sure that her fellow thirty-niner didn’t slip off and find herself somewhere fighty in the Middle East any time soon.

Speaking of jobs…

They met up with Lúcio and a now-conscious McCree in the Atlas foyer and set about joining clubs and societies. Lúcio saw a student DJ booth and immediately bounded off into an animated discussion about synths. McCree found his calling in the ‘Beverage Appreciation Society’, which was giving out free samples of homebrewed beer.

“What about you, Lena? What do you want to sign up for?”

Lena only had one place in mind. She rocked up at several booths all together bearing the banners in Overwatch University’s colours of white and orange. Students in sportswear chatted cheerful and handed out leaflets.

A tall, well-built Asian boy with a ponytail zeroed in on them and zipped over.

“Good morning.” He said quickly. “We’re the AA.”

“The… what?” Lena asked, confused. “This is Alcoholics Anonymous? Why is everybody in sports uniform? Why’re you handing out free shuttlecocks? That doesn’t seem like –”

“Athletics Association.” He cut in. His face was stony.

“I keep tell you, Hanzo, you need change name.” A truly gigantic woman appeared as though from nowhere, though Lena realised that she had just been bent over writing something down and she’d mistaken her for another stall.

“Athletics Association says all that needs saying, coach.” Hanzo argued.

“So this is Athletics, not alcoholics? Then I’m in the right place. Lena Oxton, hundred-meters and hurdles.”

Hanzo’s resting bitchface brightened. “A hurdler! Excellent. What kind of times are you running at?”

“My hundred-meters personal is twelve point two five, but I’ve been stuck at around twelve three for the last year…”

Lena and Hanzo launched into a very boring conversation about track times, leaving Fareeha to look around awkwardly.

“You look like strong girl.” The huge woman said in a grunting Russian accent. Under her massive muscular bulk, pink undercut and half-sleeve of tattoos, she had a very kind face. Fareeha realised she was being sized up. “How much you bench?”

“One-sixty if I must. But I prefer a well-rounded workout.”

“One-sixty, eh?” The woman rubbed her hands together. “Hmm. You look like a high jumper. Nice and tall. Zarya make a high jumper of you, yes? We take team to tournaments all over country and world. Many nights of drinking also.”

And so that was how Lena and Fareeha both ended up signing their lives away to the Athletics Association. They came away from the stall after unskilfully detaching from ponytailed Hanzo, who had turned out to be the president of the club. He had been going on about avenging the honour of his family name by placing first at an upcoming national archery tournament.

“Did you wanna join anything else, love?” Lena asked Fareeha.

“I might go and talk to the bodybuilders.”

Lena glanced again in the direction of the muscleheads. They were now betting each other how many ten kilogram barrels of whey powder they could juggle.

“You know, as corking as that sounds, I might give it a miss.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll meet you by the statue of the monk outside?”

“Sure. I’ll recognise you easily, ‘cus they’ll’ve forced you into one of those grotty little vests.”

With Fareeha gone, Lena checked around and then made a beeline for a small booth in the corner she’d seen earlier.

“Morning. Are you interested in a job here on campus?”

“I, er, yeh. I need one kinda sharpish. Tight budget and all that. I’m a hard worker, I promise.”

“This isn’t your interview.” The red-jumper running the stall chuckled. “Come and have a seat and we’ll figure out what goes best with your academic schedule.”

Lena nervously sat and answered some questions about her course and extra-curricular commitments as well as past experience. The red-jumper seemed quite impressed with her CV.

“How does an eighteen-year-old have so many jobs in their life already?”

“Gotta get by, isn’t it, love.” Lena’s smile was rather fixed. She furiously twiddled her thumbs in her lap, full of restless energy.

“Well, you’re obviously well-qualified, and I understand that unlike _some_ of the students here, you actually need a job.” he emphasised the ‘some’ with a distasteful look around at all the rich InterPush students. They were easily identifiable by their red wristbands, which were special all-entry event passes for freshers’ week that had come free as part of their deal at Overwatch. “I’ll find you something good. No dishwashing or library monitoring. Nobody likes the Quiet Patrol.”

He clicked through some more pages on his laptop and eventually found what he was looking for.

“What about being a barista at the Watchpoint?” He rotated the laptop towards her. The page showed the campus coffee shop, which was across the foyer, obscured by students at the moment. It was modern and trendy, with a theme of simplistic furniture and futuristic equipment. “You said you’d worked bar and restaurant before, so you’re an ideal pick. The pay is a bit better than the other options too, and you get free employee coffee.”

Lena was frankly sold at ‘here is a job for which you will be paid money’, but decent wages and free coffee were nothing to sneer at either. She agreed on the spot.

“Great. So, I’ll schedule you in for a trial shift, just to see if you get on okay, and if that goes well you’ll sign a contract and your manager will discuss hours with you.”

Lena filled out her details on a form and left the stall feeling slightly more settled. Her stomach gurgled uncomfortably, reminding her that she needed to eat. The thought of buying food set her on edge again. The twenty pound note in her pocket was literally her only money right now. What if she ballsed up the trial shift and didn’t get the job? Then she’d have nothing.

She’d only applied to Overwatch because they had categorically promised her a ‘Low Household Income’ supplement to all the student loans she was going to have to take out to study. The government would loan her money to pay her tuition fees, and also a maintenance loan to cover her living costs. But her room at thirty-nine Kings Row didn’t come cheap, and after paying to live there for the whole year, she’d had a measly forty pounds left of the maintenance loan, which she had used up paying for transport here.

At the last minute, Overwatch had contacted her to say there was a hitch with the Low Income money. She’d be getting half of what they had promised, and not until after Christmas. Her resulting panic attack, fit of rage and almost total meltdown had destroyed two perfectly innocent phone boxes in the Hounslow area. Old habits died hard, and Lena was sometimes very thankful that she was a gifted track runner. Police tended not to like wanton vandalism of city property, but then again, Police also tended not to spend as much time on the treadmill as perhaps they should.

She needed this job badly, and needed it soon.

 

-0-

 

Meanwhile, in the Volskaya Medicine and Biological Sciences building, the now-legendary #TraumAmari lecture was winding down.

The main lecture theatre was huge and purpose-built, and strangely chilly for a sunny September morning. They had been informed in their introductory lecture earlier that morning that the theatre was directly above the dissection room in the basement, which was kept at refrigerated temperatures at all times, and the cold bled up through the vents in the floor.

Amélie liked it this temperature. She had accidentally sat in the path of a sunbeam filtering in through the small, high windows and it was blinding her with its brightness. This was not optimal. She felt disquieted being illuminated as such. It made her more visible, and she wanted nothing less than visibility.

Alas she could not move now. Other first year medical students had filled the rest of her row and she would have to ask them to move for her to get out. This would only draw more attention to herself. So she was stuck.

The bright sunshine fell on a girl full of contradictions. She was tall and elegant, but looked pale and somehow diminished, like she had lost a lot of weight recently. Amélie’s face was angular and haughty, beautiful in any light, but there was a harshness there that did not belong to such a young woman. The glowing tan she’d had in the family photograph was nowhere in sight, nor was the warm smile with which she had beamed at the camera. The golden-haired boy was also absent.

Amélie made notes in perfect cursive in her expensive notebook. Her handwriting was dense and flowing, with little space between words. Her fingers were long and dexterous, but cold and white with lack of blood flow. She held the pen far too tightly.

The lecturer in front of her held the attention of her enraptured audience. She wove a fantastic narrative through her life, from joining the army at a young age and working as an elite sniper in the Gulf War to attending medical school at Overwatch. The army gave her a chance to further her career and she accepted, becoming a trauma surgeon and going back out to save lives in Afghanistan. The messages of her talk were clear and resounding: take chances that are given to you. Fight for what you believe in. It’s never too late to try harder. Life will be tough, but you will be tougher.

She showed them pictures of surgeries she had performed, injuries she had seen as a soldier and a civilian. The medical students in the audience were by and large eighteen years old – they’d never been confronted with such awful images. They cringed and screamed in all the right places, turned shades of green, and some dashed out of the room to the toilets, clutching their hands over their mouths.

“These are the realities of medicine.” Professor Amari had told them. “You will face patients who look already lost whatever branch of the profession you go into. You will face weeping families in waiting rooms, worried relatives, patients who are going to die and know it. But you will also see miracles.”

She clicked over to a picture of a man she had shown them at the beginning. He had been a bloody mess on an operating table with both of his legs blown off and shrapnel peppering his body. In this picture, though, he was standing on two prosthetic legs, giving his young daughter a piggyback. Another shot of a woman who had been in a gas attack near a military checkpoint, her face and neck a map of sizzling pain. She held her husband’s hand and cried on her wedding day. A little boy ravaged by malnutrition, disease and a roadside bombing had grown up into a man, accepting his bachelor’s degree on his graduation day and supporting himself on crutches.

“We don’t win every battle we fight, as doctors.” Amari said. “But we keep on fighting, because every victory is worth all of the effort. If you show me effort in your studies, I’ll make sure you win more battles than you lose. That’s my pledge to all of you medical students. The world needs heroes.”

The powerpoint ended and the whole theatre erupted with applause. Amélie saw people around her standing up, tears in their eyes. She did the same, mimicking their behaviour.

She felt nothing. The lecture had stirred very little in her. She had been more interested in the pictures and the techniques that Amari had described. The motivational and inspirational stories meant little to her. Dr. Griffe’s wise words echoed in her head: ‘ _Do not allow yourself to be riled up by emotional words, Amélie. That isn’t healthy for you. The emotions will cloud things, make it more difficult for you. Until you have learned to control them, you should avoid getting caught up in them all together.’_

She wished she could call Dr. Griffe right now. However much she had doubted him, fought against him, stormed out of his office and crumpled up his prescription papers in the past, his absence made her strangely incomplete. He had protested against her leaving France to come to Overwatch, but her mind had been made up for a long time. Gérard had wanted to come here to study. There was nothing left for her in Annecy but exclusion, isolation and suspicion. It was a small city. No, she needed a fresh start.

She had his phone number and they had a video-link therapy session scheduled for the end of the week. Amélie wondered if she would hold out that long.

Professor Amari’s lecture was finished and the students were filing out towards the nearby Atlas building, eager to sign up for clubs and societies or grab some lunch. Amélie had no intention of voluntarily putting herself in more social situations than she had to. She turned away and began to walk back towards her room in King’s Row.

“Not going to take a look at the activities fair?” A voice called behind her. Amélie turned around to see a woman with blonde hair striding towards her, a red jumper clutched in her hand.

“ _Non_.” She said curtly. “I am not interested in joining any clubs.”

“Really? No clubs at all?” The woman asked, falling into step beside Amélie who had turned away and was trying to power-walk towards her room.

“Non, no clubs at all.” She repeated flatly.

“You must be interested in something, _mein freund_.” The woman insisted. “When I was in first year, I thought that the demanding schedule of medical school wouldn’t leave any time for hobbies. But I was wrong. I don’t regret joining the BakeSoc for one moment!”

Amélie had a vivid and fairly amusing thought of herself wearing a pink apron and large oven mitts, holding a steaming tray of cupcakes. The absurdity of it made her chuckle quietly.

“You think baking is funny? Easy? Hah, you’ve got another thing coming!”

For a woman several inches shorter than Amélie and fairly petite in build, she was surprisingly quick and strong. Amélie found herself turned around and walking back towards the bustling Atlas building.

“N-no, I said I didn’t want –”

But the woman was forcing her head through the collar of her red jumper and practically frogmarching Amélie inside. She had a mad glint in her eye.

“Oh no, _mein_ fun-dodging freshman.” Her grip on Amélie’s arm was like iron. Thoughts ran around her head, knocking into each other and creating even more confusion. Should she try and wrestle free of the mad woman’s grip, or would that just make a scene? Should she go along with it and be forced to give her name to some student group, and risk revealing herself?

Amélie wished she had some kind of grappling hook that she could launch up at the upper levels of the foyer and use to make a quick getaway, like in the movies. She heard Dr. Griffe’s voice again, warning her about coming to Overwatch. Maybe he had been right. Maybe this was a terrible idea.

Suddenly her mouth was full of something unbelievably delicious. She had been so busy trying to plan an escape that she hadn’t responded to the woman’s insistent attempts to push baked goods into her hands. The red-jumpered medic had gotten impatient and crammed a macaron into her mouth.

“Angela, you can’t just force-feed freshers.” The girl behind the stall protested. She offered Amélie a napkin and a leaflet.

“Look at her, I’d say she needs a little cake. Thin as a rake!” Angela the red-jumper looked ready to start flinging éclairs at Amélie if she complained, so she swallowed the macaron and attempted a smile.

“Oh god, is it awful?” The other girl asked, misreading Amélie’s poor attempt at smiling as a grimace. “I told you we shouldn’t’ve used so much almond powder.”

“No, Mei, she thinks it’s lovely. Don’t you?”

Given that the older student was glaring at her, hand on hip, the other cradling the plate of eclairs as if ready to attack with it, Amélie agreed that Mei’s macarons were, in fact, lovely.

“Thank you – but what’s that accent? You’re not… French, are you?”

A shiver of fear gripped Amélie. Her fingers twitched as if reaching for a weapon. Mei knew. She had to.

“French? Why didn’t you say! France is the home of patisserie! You must have tasted so many wonderful cakes and pastries!”

“I don’t like cake.”

This simple statement caused a frankly inconsiderate amount of outrage. All the colour drained out of Mei’s face and she clutched the stall for support. The platter of éclairs fell from Angela’s hand and clattered loudly to the floor. The hubbub of the activities fair seemed to have suddenly fallen silent.

“You… don’t… like… cake?” Angela said through gritted teeth. If it was possible, she seemed to be channelling the spirit of a rampaging rhinoceros. Amélie thought she was about to be punched in the face.

She thought fast.

“I don’t like cake… I _love_ cake.”

Everybody cheered and clapped. Amélie felt a rush of blood to her pale cheeks. This was not what she had intended. On her first day, the whole student union was giving her a slow clap for liking cake.

“Then you will of course want to sign up for the BakeSoc, ja?” Angela hissed furiously.

There was no getting out of it, and so Amélie Lacroix gave her details away.

“And if I don’t see you at the bring-and-bake on Wednesday, _mein kleines entlein_ , I know where to find you.”

Some defensive instinct flared in Amélie’s chest. “What did you call me?”

Angela’s face was practically demonic. “My. Little. Duckling.”

No pet name had ever sounded so threatening. Amélie took the chance while Angela threw back her head and laughed manically to slip off into the crowd. She could just hear as she made a break for it Angela saying to Mei: “And that, Mei, is how you get freshers to sign up. Fear.”

With that over and done, Amélie could finally return to the simplicity and solitude of her room. She felt ragged with the effort of being around so many people, of talking so much in one day, of having emotions flare up every few minutes, it seemed. She marched across the wide paved courtyard outside of the Atlas building, not caring where she was going.

“Oi, watch where you’re – ” A voice called out, but she was already a few steps ahead, weaving through the throng of excited freshers. In minutes she was free of the centre of the campus and on her way to Kings Row. She realised that she had begun to run, and that she must look foolish, but the promise of sanctuary kept her going.

“How was your first – ”

She pushed past the flatmate with almost a growl.

“What’s your problem?” He demanded, but she was taking the stairs three at a time, and was soon up on the fourth floor. Her keys shook in her hands as she tried to open the locked door to room thirteen. She could hear the flatmate labouring up the stairs, his footsteps coming closer, calling after her, asking her if she was all right, there was no need to be so rude, he just wanted to help. But before he could even huff and puff his way up to the landing, she was inside her room and locking the door from the inside.

Amélie collapsed against the back of the door, drowning out his knocks. She clutched her chest where an old scar was prickling uncomfortably. It was hard to breathe. Her fingers tingled, white with restricted blood flow, but these physical ills were nothing to the chaos in her mind.

She couldn’t take it. From her pocket she pulled her phone, and dialled a familiar number. After a few rings, he answered.

“ _Allô, Docteur Thadeas Griffe_.”

“ _Docteur Griffe,_ ” Amélie croaked down the line, “ _Amélie. Aidez-moi, s’il vous plait. Aidez-moi.”_


	3. Justice (and cocktails) Will Be Served

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided on making this chapter longer rather than shorter, though it was difficult to find a cut-off point. So many thanks to everybody who commented and left kudos! Just a translation for non British people:  
> GCSEs: exams taken age 16, normally you take between 7 and 11 subjects to include at least Maths, English and Sciences.

“Rude.” Lena tutted as the black-haired girl barrelled past her outside the Atlas building. With one swish of her high ponytail, she had disappeared. “Bet it’s an InterPush. They’re so damn entitled. Fistful of fifty pound notes up their arses.”

Lúcio nodded in agreement. He’d joined Lena and Fareeha on the steps of the plinth supporting the giant statue of a weird monk chap outside the Atlas to have lunch.

“You say that, Lena, but I think we need one.”

“Eh? What d’ya mean, love?”

“An InterPusher. One of the rich ones. We need to make friends with one, or how else we gonna afford to go out and eat expensive paninis from the student café, hmm?”

“That’s cold, Lúcio.” Fareeha said, looking uncomfortable. She had packed a lunch: chicken breast on malted bread with a pine nut salad. Lúcio was tucking into one of the aforementioned paninis with relish, and Lena insisted she’d had a big breakfast and was too full to think about lunch. She’d had a bran bar and a can of diet energy drink before going on her morning jog, and was too proud to admit she probably couldn’t afford anything to eat.

“Okay, go on, find us an InterPusher.” She gestured to the crowd.

“We gotta be detectives.” Lúcio said with a grin, squinting at the passing students. “What does a rich person look like?”

“Well, a diamond tiara and mink-fur cape are sure giveaways, love, but I don’t think they’ll be that obvious.” Lena said. Fareeha and Lúcio chuckled.

“I thought _you_ might be.” Fareeha said absentmindedly. “Your watch looks expensive.”

Lena looked down at the chunky futuristic watch on her left wrist. It was white, with a large light-up blue face. The words ‘Chronal XLR-8R’ were etched in silver across the top. This baby could work up to forty metres underwater, do date, time, weather and several timer functions and alarms. She tried to keep it safe, but it was scuffed and chipped in places in such a short amount of time.

“It was a present for getting into uni,” she explained, “My whole family and all my friends clubbed together to pay for it. Half the estate, actually. It’s cause, they said, they got tired of me always moaning about never having enough time to do all the stuff I wanted. And turning up too early or late for things.”

She patted the watch fondly, activating the bright blue backlight on the dial.

“And what about all your soundboards and stuff, Lúcio? You could be a rich kid if I didn’t know better.”

“I started a Patreon to help me get music software and equipment. I have fans, you know.” He held two thumbs up with a wide grin. “Maybe not so many in England, but hopefully that changes soon!”

They then had a good laugh about Fareeha being rich enough to pay for those rock-solid abs. It was fascinating enough to watch all the students in the square, from a blonde red-jumper striding around aggressively offering people cake to two older men having a heated argument. They couldn’t tell what it was about, but it ended with a yell across the square.

“Over my dead body, Reyes!”

The grey-haired man who had shouted brandished a fist at his black-goateed enemy, who just cackled and grinned.

Then, something decidedly different caught Lena’s eye. A skinny boy in ragged clothes with unkempt hair was hobbling through the crowd, fluttering fingers dipping into open bags and unattended pockets. He came away with wallets and pocketed them.

“Holy mackerel.” She whispered. “That chap’s a pickpocket.”

“Where?” Fareeha asked, swelling with righteous rage. Lena pointed, and Fareeha sprang to her feet and cracked her knuckles. But before she could jump over and throttle him, another boy came into view and the two shared a high five. The second boy was enough to give even Fareeha pause: incredibly tall and twice as broad, he lumbered through the crowd covered in tattoos and wearing little more than a pair of trackie bums and a biker vest.

“I didn’t know Overwatch offered courses on ‘How to look like an Evil duo from a Thelma and Louise/Mad Max crossover’.” Lena quipped. “Maybe, love, you just let him go.”

“Nonsense!” Fareeha batted Lena’s arm away. “They’ve taken peoples wallets with their bank cards and student IDs and money in! They could completely ruin somebody’s first day!”

She set off to follow them. Lena and Lúcio exchanged doubtful looks, but grabbed their bags and set off. At least they would be able to identify Fareeha’s body.

“Hey, you two!” The fighty fresher yelled at the two thieves. Lena facepalmed so hard that she almost concussed herself.

They kept going.

“I’m talking to you, very large fat boy and small boy with poor hygiene!” Fareeha yelled again, drawing the attention of all the onlookers now. The two boys, realising they’d been rumbled, made a break for it. The larger one started throwing freshers aside in his effort to get away.

“They stole a load of wallets!” Fareeha kept yelling, and the crowd were parting for her, checking their bags and pockets in horror. Several victims of the pickpocketing let out very loud curses.

“What’s this ruckus?” Somebody asked irately, unseen amongst the crowd. To everybody’s surprise, Professor Amari appeared, carrying a stack of photocopying. She saw her daughter chasing down the thieves, who were by now actually assaulting anybody in their path in their effort to get away. “Oh, _ya alhi_ , Fareeha, why is it always you?”

“They stole a load of wallets!” Fareeha fumed. She picked up the nearest weapon – her brand-new copy of _Fundamentals of Aerodynamics_ – and raised it to throw at the escaping thieves.

She never got the chance, though. In a snowstorm of abandoned photocopying, Professor Amari had shot across the crowd. She grabbed the scrawny boy and pinned his arms behind him, forcing him to the ground. Fareeha wordlessly jumped over and restrained him.

Now Amari faced the huge boy, a tiny sixty-year-old woman against seven feet of muscle and blubber.

“Mako, we talked about this!” She scolded him like a toddler. “You promised Vice-Chancellor Wilhelm at the end of last year that you were going to turn over a new leaf! What happened?”

The big chap, Mako, pointed to the scrawny boy currently writhing and slowly suffocating in Fareeha’s vice-like grip.

“That’s no excuse. You know Jamison is a bad influence, and you still let him talk you into it. Come on, Mako, you’re a good boy. Don’t throw all your progress away.”

Mako’s shoulder slumped and his bottom lip began to quiver. With no warning whatsoever, he lunged forward and for a heart-stopping second Lena thought he was actually going to attack Amari. Instead, he hoisted Jamison up by his ankle (displacing Fareeha with a strangled yell) and began to shake him violently.

Wallets and purses and loose change rained down from the pockets and nooks of Jamison’s jacket. People in the crowd pointed and claimed ownership of their wallets, pushing forward anxiously.

“Oi, gerroff, Mako!” Jamison howled, squirming. “Prof, what’ya do that for?”

“Do you want me to call the real police?” She asked.

“If you want.” He sneered, folding his arms while still upside down. “Me and Mako got diplomatic immunity, Prof!”

“And as I have told you before, that does not cover serious criminal acts.”

“What’s criminal about kindly picking up peoples’ dropped wallets to return them to lost property, prof?”

Mako nodded quickly. “Yeh, Prof. Return ‘em.”

“Of course you were.” Professor Amari’s voice could not have been more sarcastic if she tried. She rolled her eyes and sighed deeply. “You know we’ll have to put this in your records. Your new records, not the ones you stole and set fire to last semester.”

Jamison shrugged, and was then released by Mako. He fell to the floor with a loud and out of place clunk.

“Yooowww!” He whined. His foot as at the wrong angle to his leg. Had he broken his leg? “What’ya doin’ that for, Makes? Now I’ve gotta reattach this damn thing in front of all the ladies.”

He blew a kiss at Fareeha, who recoiled and glared at him.

“Suit yourself, Sheila. But you were mighty keen to jump on top of me just a mo ago.”

Jamison seemed to realise he’d said the wrong thing as soon as it was out of his mouth. Professor Amari hoisted him back up by the collar. Something fell out of his trousers – the prosthetic leg, source of the clunking sound, jarred loose by the fall.

“Jamison, if you ever talk like that to my daughter again, I will make sure you’ll need a prosthetic for your other leg too. Understood?”

“Y-yes boss. Prof. Sorry prof. Didn’t know.”

Professor Amari threw him away from her. Mako caught him under the arms, the pair both looking shocked. Amari snapped her fingers and several keen medical students stooped to pick up her scattered photocopying.

“I’ll be speaking to your father, boys.” She warned, before accepting her collected paper and strolling off in the direction of the staff room.

Several people squeezed through to retrieve their belongings, and Jamison and Mako did the only sensible thing and ran before they were mobbed by angry freshers. Lena saw Jamison pulling a single wallet from inside his boxers and holding it up in triumph, but before he could escape with it, something whizzed over him. The wallet was gone, pinned to the noticeboard behind him by a quivering arrow.

“Holy shit,” Lena whispered, helping Fareeha dust herself off. Hanzo the Athletics Association captain stood atop a nearby bench, competition bow in hand, plucking another arrow from the quiver on his back.

“Don’t fuck with the AA.” Lúcio agreed.

They all kind of stood in a state of shock, wondering if every day at Overwatch was going to be this crazy.

Lena felt the twenty pound note, thankfully still in her back pocket. Maybe she should just spend it now, enjoy the next few days. Because, if there was something she knew about the world, it was the second law of thermodynamics: the entropy of a closed system always increases. And given how much chaos they’d had today, she might not be alive to spend that money in a few days time.

 

-0-

 

Wednesday marked a sea change in Lena Oxton’s first week of university. She had one of those days where all the dominoes line up and fall over nicely, where everything seems to go well.

She started the day very, very early in the morning with a punishing run around campus as the sun came up. Her watch beeped at the end, displaying her stats – she’d managed an eight-minute mile twice and her last mile had been an excellent seven fifty-three. Fully of enthusiasm and red bull, she showered, dressed, and left number thirty-nine for her trial shift at Watchpoint.

The trendy coffee shop was dark when she arrived, a single shape slumped inside at the counter. Lena knocked and startled the girl off her stool.

“We’re not open!” She croaked, making a ‘shoo’ motion with her dainty hands.

“I’m Lena, I’m here for the trial shift?”

The girl cracked open a bleary brown eye and nodded, wrenching the door open from the inside. She was a tiny Korean girl, oversized headphones perched behind her ears, last night’s make-up not quite properly wiped from her face.

“Mornings are wank.” She said by way of introduction. “I’m Hana. Manager won’t be in for ages… set shit up and go cray.”

She retook her stool, took a giant gulp of energy drink, then slumped back down on the counter, snoring loudly.

Lena had been left to do everything herself, but she’d worked at coffee shops in the airport before. She found an apron hanging in the kitchen, scribbled her name on a badge and pinned it to her lapel. She followed the ‘Hana’s Handy Morning Checklist’ tacked to the wall, and soon the Watchpoint was spick and span, all machines tested and ready, tables cleaned and doors open to the public.

Early risers (and those who’d been up all night) trickled in as soon as they saw the lights on. After a bit of trial and error and a small burn on her pinky finger from an overenthusiastic milk steamer, Lena had got into the swing of things.

Hana remained collapsed on the counter, brown hair spread around her head like a halo.

Everybody seemed eager to meet Lena. She suspected that this was the best early-morning service they’d ever received at the Watchpoint given Hana’s ‘sunny’ disposition. Her tip jar was soon full of change.

Lena observed the groups of chattering students. The cake-wielding red-jumper from the first day was there with a cute Chinese girl in glasses, sipping coffee and conversing very seriously about their imminent trip to the supermarket to buy ingredients for some kind of bake-a-palooza. Professor Amari sat between two glowering men, attempting what was either couples’ counselling or a United Nations Peace Summit. Professor Winston licked his fingers clean of the remains his peanut butter and cinnamon bagel, watched by a scandalised-looking Professor Vaswani (who taught ‘Maths for Dumb Engineers’ and whose hobby was probably arranging her socks by thread count).

The sixth sense that Lena had developed after five years working many different jobs tingled, signalling the arrival of a ‘boss’. Hana seemed to possess it too, because she roused from her stupor, grabbed the empty can of energy drink and vaulted over the counter, throwing the can in the bin as she did so.

“Good morning, Mr Lindholm!” She said in a bright, giggly voice. Lena almost did a double take at the abrupt change in her co-worker. Though implying Hana had done any ‘work’ was pushing it.

“Morning, Hana.” A short, bearded man said, holding out his arms. Hana gave him a short hug and he patted her on the arse. Lena suddenly knew how she’d kept her job. “And who’s this with us?”

“This is Lena. She’s the new rookie. I’ve been showing her the ropes, and she’s done really well for her first shift.” Hana grinned at Lena and gave her a condescending little thumbs-up.

“Has she! Wonderful to hear, wonderful, pleased to meeting you, Lena.” He shook her hand, and thankfully omitted the bum pat. “We lost many good baristas to graduation last year! Good to having some new blood, I think.”

He did a cursory check of the café and equipment and seemed more than satisfied.

“Well, you certainly make a good team. I’ve never seen my shop so busy so early! Two lovely young ladies serving coffee, it’s a wonder they can stay away!” Hana took the next arse-grope with stoicism and a slightly fixed smile. “Well, no point beating the bushes, I’ll get you a contract, Lena.”

With that he bustled off to his office. As soon as his door was closed, Hana rounded on Lena.

“If you say anything, rookie, I will end you, aight? It’ll be GG for you. I’ve got an easy paycheck here. You keep zip, we both earn money, easy-mode.”

For such a diminutive girl, Hana looked fairly murderous so Lena didn’t argue.

“All right, love. No worries. But I get to keep my tips, yeh?”

Hana eyed the brimming tip jar covetously, but agreed.

Lena left her early shift just as the lunch staff came on, having signed her contract and received a small advance in the form of £45 for her shift. With all of her tips, she now had £78.95, two euros, a shiny coat button and somebody’s phone number scrawled on the back of a ripped piece of newspaper. She discarded the number and the button and kept the rest.

With her newfound fortune she treated herself to a lunch of fish and chips from the food hall and sat chomping down fat, greasy yellow chips with relish. She justified this incredibly unhealthy meal by telling herself she needed energy for her first meeting of the Athletics Association that afternoon.

Overwatch’s sports facilities weren’t exactly Olympic, but they weren’t a mini-golf course and a set of rusty dumbbells either. The AA met out in the Omnica Sports Arena, around fifty students in workout gear, eager to get going.

President Hanzo stood on the first place step of the winners’ podium to survey his team, looking both dignified and a little pompous in his washed and pressed competition uniform.

“I am honoured that you all chose to come here today.” He bowed to them. Somebody snickered. “To me, Athletics is not just sport. It is art. It is emotion. Defeat and victory, a dance of mind, body and soul. We put our hearts into our work. Sometimes our losses feel like wins because we know that we did our best, and we are proud of our and our teammates achievements. And sometimes also, our wins feel like losses because we know deep down that we could have done better. That we were unsportsmanlike, that we cheated, that we won by default.”

Behind Lena and Fareeha, the snickerer muttered to his friend, “His speech gets longer every year.”

“He sounds like a fortune cookie.”

“Discipline –” Hanzo emphasised loudly over the whisperers, “Is the key to success. Teamwork is the key to success. Talent will only get you so far. So we will fight hard this year to see our names on every medal and trophy! For our honour, for our legacy!”

He held his fist in the air, expecting exultant applause. A few people clapped politely.

“Well, that was ace, Han.” The snickering boy said from behind them before squeezing through to address them. Lena saw his face and noticed that he and Hanzo looked similar enough to be siblings. “Hi all. I’m Genji, social secretary of the Athletics Anonymous. No, sorry, the Alcoholics Association.”

Several people laughed, but Hanzo frowned.

“Anyway, after training, tonight is our first society social. We’re doing a bar crawl through the campus pubs and bars, finishing at Numbani, which is the club underneath the Atlas building. Fancy dress is not optional. The theme, because I have to pretend we are still a serious sporting society, is ‘Olympics’. Go crazy with it. We’ll see you at the King’s Head at eight.”

He gave them a double thumbs-up and winked at Lena and Fareeha. Hanzo’s disapproving scowl was so heavy that she thought his skull might collapse under its weight.

“Now that we’ve sorted out a _party_ , we should get on with what you’re actually all here for.”

Genji stuck out his tongue behind Hanzo’s back, but they did indeed begin sorting themselves up and stretching out.

Hanzo and Zarya, the pink-haired coach, had them do an hour of circuit training after they’d all stretched. It was high-intensity, and neither of them would accept laziness. Soon Lena was drenched in sweat and regretting her oily lunch.

Then it was finally time for their actual events. Lena worked her way up from a long-distance jog to short interval sprints, relishing the feeling of slightly springy all-weather track beneath her trainers. She never felt more free than when she was zipping through the air, wind blowing her hair about, the good burn in her chest. More than anything she loved pushing herself in the hundred meters – the feeling that she was going so fast that if she blinked, she’d end up ten metres in front of where she had been.

Genji clicked the stopwatch as she crossed the line, panting and heaving. She kept jogging for another hundred metres, making a circuit back to him to avoid cramping.

“What did you say your personal best was?”

“Twelve point two five.”

“Well, you just ran a twelve point two-two.”

“Bollocks!” She said in disbelief. He showed her the stopwatch, and it was true. “Holy hog-roasts, I did!”

She high-fived him and took the stopwatch, ready to time his sprint.

“Hang on,” he said, “I have to just put my feet on.”

He bent down and unzipped his tracksuit to show two prosthetic legs coming from his knees. Lena masked her shock poorly, but luckily he wasn’t looking at her. She’d never have thought… he walked so normally… how had he…?

From a sports bag over his shoulder he took two complicated looking prosthetics, the type Lena had seen in the Paralympics. He took off his walking set and carefully affixed and adjusted the running set before declaring himself ready.

“Give me some warm-up time – I’ll come over and get you when I want a time. Looks like your friend is… well, we can’t quite call it high jumping, but it’s a start.”

Lena followed his finger to where Zarya was attempting to teach Fareeha how to high jump. She mistimed her launch and crunched painfully into the bar. With a strangled yell, she and the bar toppled into the crash mat. Zarya put her face in her hands.

“Maybe not high jumper.” She muttered. “Maybe long jumper. Closer to ground suits you more, it looks like.”

“No, let me have another go.” Fareeha insisted, pulling herself off the mat. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

Lena watched, whooping and clapping as Fareeha tried three more times, each resulting in a fairly spectacular fail. After the third time and the violent nosebleed that head-butting the bar brought along, everybody agreed that it was best for Fareeha to take a short break.

“How can it be so hard?” She asked grumpily, sitting on the bench beside Lena, who was handing her paper towels as fast as possible to try and stop the bleeding. “It’s just jumping over a bar!”

“What’ve you got all those bloody great rippling muscles for if you’re no good at any sports?” Lena asked.

“Oh. Well.” To her surprise, Fareeha blushed. “I like to be fit, for when I can finally join the army. And I… I like to look nice… for, you know, people.”

Her dark skin was dusted a faint pink and she looked away, suddenly fascinated by a pigeon flying overhead.

“Oh, speaking of! So, this pub crawl tonight, eh, love? We’re going, right? We’ll dress up proper, and you can impress some… ‘people’ with those stainless steel abs.” Lena winked at her.

“I… I don’t know if I’ll go. I mean, I don’t drink, after all.”

This was a fairly obvious lie, because Fareeha had gotten absolutely wankered on four cans of beer on their first night in number thirty-nine, but Lena let it slide.

“Well you can come along, ‘not drink’, and look nice for some people. Seen any ‘people’ in particular?”

“What? No, of course not! I’m focused on my career goals and self-improvement, I don’t have time for gir- for people.”

But Lena had heard all she needed to know. Fareeha’s Freudian slip had betrayed her. It would have been rude to try and out her or probe further when she was obviously private about it, but Lena made a mental note all the same. Another vivid imagining of Fareeha’s muscular thighs blossomed in her mind, though she didn’t let on.

Genji was now ready, and Lena watched with fascination as he ran his hundred. The speed was incredible on the prosthetics. Not as fast as without, but still breath-taking. It was clear he was a serious athlete.

She showed him his time, which was faster than hers, but he grunted in disgust and heaved a huge sigh.

“Not good enough.”

“Eh? But, love, you ran a twelve point one four, that’s amazing!”

“No, it’s not.”

With an odd, angry glance over towards where Hanzo was shooting in the makeshift archery range (converted cricket nets), Genji loped away to let off steam with a run.

Exhausted, aching and sweaty, they finished practice and went back to number thirty-nine to get ready for the night’s escapades. Lena allowed Fareeha to shower first – she had much more hair to shampoo and condition – and mooched around her room thinking about what to wear.

Anybody could see that Lena wasn’t a girly-girl. She’d worn a dress for her GCSE prom and her grandmother’s funeral, but that was pretty much it. She just felt more comfortable and herself in trousers – and there was no rule that she couldn’t show off her long runner’s legs in trousers.

She picked out some black skinny jeans that might as well have been leggings, slightly ripped and torn at the knees – not because that was fashionable, but because Lena had legitimately destroyed the fabric at the knees rollerblading on the estate without pads. A crisp, tight white t-shirt to show off her toned physique. Then, because she couldn’t bear to be without it, her ratty leather charity shop bomber jacket, with all of its mismatched patches.

She was holding a pair of socks up to her nose to check if they were okay to wear when she spotted movement from the corner of her eye. Across the street, in the identical room to hers at number thirty-eight opposite, a girl stood by the window. Lena only caught a glimpse of her before she hurriedly drew the curtains: a pale, angular face and long black hair.

“Well, you’re not getting a show, love.” She muttered to the window, drawing her own curtains. Lena didn’t like the feeling that she was being watched.

She stripped and wrapped herself in her towel, thinking that Fareeha must be done by now. When she went out onto the landing, Fareeha was indeed done, and walking back to her room. Walking in just a tiny towel. With her dark skin glistening with water, compact musculature sliding underneath the silky, unblemished exterior.

Well, unblemished except for –

“You’ve got a _tattoo_?” Lena yelped, unable to contain herself. Of all people! Fareeha Amari, who in the past three days she’d known Lena, told her off for jaywalking across an empty street, insisted on correct usage of the word ‘bemused’ and brought out a dictionary to prove McCree was wrong, and held a heated discussion with a janitor about unlawful civilian bombings in the middle east. Fareeha was about the least rebellious, impulsive person Lena had ever met. And yet, there it was.

“Hey! Don’t stare!” She tried to pull the tiny towel over the tattoo on her back, but just ended up dislodging it from more important places. Fareeha gave a kind of anguished wail and made a dash for her room, slamming the door behind her, but not before revealing an exceptional, chiselled bum.

“You’ll have to tell me why you got it tonight!” Lena yelled through Fareeha’s door, before nipping into the shower herself. It didn’t take long to give her body a good scrub. She kept her hair short for a reason – it was incredibly thick and badly behaved, liable to stick out at random angles even when tamed with hair straighteners or product. At least when it was short, this effect looked semi-deliberate and merely ‘sexily dishevelled’. Or so she hoped.

Lena’s mind wandered as she lathered shampoo into her hair. She hadn’t really thought about it much, but she supposed that university was a chance to… explore. A bit more than she’d done on the estate, at least. She knew she wasn’t attracted to men – a backseat fumble with Derek Davidson on the aforementioned GCSE prom night had cemented that for her. But a confusing night at a house party with his sister a year later had made her consider the possibility she might be… into girls. She didn’t feel like putting any label on it right now, but judging by the fluttering heart in her chest and the ache between her legs at the memory of Fareeha’s sculpted body, she should probably invest in a label-maker. She had the feeling that she’d need to print some soon.

And Fareeha’s slip at the track earlier today – she’d almost said girls instead of people. She wanted to look good for girls. So there was a chance, then…

Lena’s shower lasted a fair bit longer than normal.

 

-0-

 

Amélie sat miserably in a lumpy armchair in a flat across campus, grinding her teeth. All around her, the smell of baking wafted through the air, students chatted and drank tea and coffee, and Überfrau Angela Ziegler oversaw them all with exceptional malice.

“Not much of a talker, are you?” Asked bespectacled Mei, accepting a plate of freshly baked brandy snaps and putting one in her mouth whole. She offered one to Amélie, who refused, but then saw that Angela was watching and took the smallest one, taking a nibble and declaring it delicious.

“I don’t have much to talk about, chérie.”

“But you must. What are you studying?”

“Medicine.”

“I see. So what made you come from France? Was it the InterPush?”

“Yes.”

“What do you do for hobbies?”

“Sit in crowded apartments and answer stupid questions, apparently.” Amélie snapped. She regretted it immediately, when Mei looked affronted.

“There’s no need to be like that. We all have a hard time, being away from home for the first time, lots of new places, new people. But you don’t have to try and push people away. I remember when I first came from China, I barely spoke English, and I was scared I wouldn’t make any friends.”

“My English is perfect.”

“That’s… that’s not the point I was trying to…” Mei trailed off exasperatedly. “Look, Angela just wants to help. I know she’s… ruthless, but when she plucked me out of the crowd and made me join Baking, I suddenly had friends, a fun hobby… and I gained twenty pounds in like two months, but that’s beside the point. And you look like you need a couple more croissants in you anyway.”

She waved a hand at Amélie’s appearance, and the dirty mirror on the far wall echoed her sentiment. Amélie was on the borderline of slim and gaunt, leaning more towards skeletal. She looked tired, with purple circles under her eyes, and all the veins in her hands were visible through her skin. They looked like wriggling blue spiders burrowed into her flesh. Amélie shuddered at the very thought.

She took a proper bite of the brandy snap and relished the sweet, crunchy sensation on her tongue.

“ _Dieu_ , that’s… exquisite.”

She finished it in another bite and took another. Hovering nearby, Angela gave an approving nod to Mei and swept off to pelt freshers with gingerbread people.

“You know, later tonight, we’re going out for a social.” Mei broached the subject timidly, testing the waters. “Just to a couple of the campus pubs. Nothing big. A few drinks, some games, a Great British Bake-Off trivia quiz, you know, low-key.”

“Non, thank you for the offer, but I am… busy.”

“Like hell you are, my flighty little duckling.” Angela was back. She put her hands on Amélie’s shoulders as if restraining her. Amélie noticed a slight whiskey-ish whiff on her breath, and realised she must have been drinking irish coffee. “If I have to, I will raid the pharmacy lab in the Volskaya building, drug every pastry I make, and wait until you’re knocked out to force you into a dress and chain you to the bar of a nice pub.”

“You have an odd idea of fun, ma chérie.” Amélie said lazily, hand drifting towards the platter of brandy snaps. “But I am of course game for a little casual bondage.”

Amélie was vaguely shocked at the words coming out of her own mouth, but making Angela blush and squirm gave her unexpected pleasure. She had always loved to tease and flirt with… with Gérard.

“That’s not what I… If that’s what it takes to get you to the pub, I’ll go ask the climbing club for rope right now!” Angela recovered quickly. Amélie sighed, knowing that this was another social activity she would not be getting out of without making a fuss. This bring-and-bake had been almost bearable, though the giggling and focus on cake was beginning to wear on her patience. Perhaps they would all be more entertaining with a bit of alcohol in them.

“As amusing as I would find it to see you try, I will come tonight.”

“You will?”

“Yes. Unless you were hoping to have to tie me up to do it, in which case…”

“No, no, it’s good. _Sehr gut._ We’re meeting at the King’s Head at eight.”

Amélie left Angela’s apartment and walked across campus back to King’s Row, several more brandy snaps hidden up the sleeves of her cardigan for consumption later. Nobody bothered her as she ascended to her room. Her flatmates were playing computer games in the parlour. They turned to see who had come home, and snorted when they saw her but didn’t stop her.

“She’s a weirdo, that one.” One muttered to the other as Amélie climbed the stairs.

“Totally. Still, she’s hot. Creepy hot, but still hot. I would.”

“Ew, dude, don’t. You don’t know what kind of crazy she’s got going on. She looks like she would eat your head and deposit her eggs in you after sex. Like a praying mantis.”

“You’re gross.”

“But I’m not wrong.”

Amélie stopped on the first floor landing, hand frozen to the bannister. It had been a foolish comment, off-hand, wild, and offensive. But something cold was spreading in her stomach. In her head, a scene played out to which she was but a spectator. The boy in her bed, panting and naked in a post-coital haze. A pair of long-fingered hands – her hands – reaching out to caress his cheeks. The hands ran down the side of his face, to his neck, and slowly began to clamp down. He was slow to react. His unfocused eyes went wide. He tried to call out, but she held down hard on his windpipe. He struggled, lashing out, but she held on. She could feel the desperate bounding of the pulse in his neck, muscles spasming, nerve impulses firing wildly.

Then he shuddered and went still. A rush of satisfaction washed over her, but she still held on, tighter, tighter, until she was sure he was dead. She left him in her bed, limp but unblemished.

A loud shout broke the awful daydream and Amélie found herself on her knees, her whole body trembling.

“Fuck’s sake! Learn to play support, noob. We need to finish this game before D.Va's stream starts!” The boy said to his friend. He didn’t know what Amélie had just seen. She ran to her room on legs that felt they would crack and shatter into shards of bone any moment and locked her door.

_What was that?_ She asked herself, speechless. _To imagine such a thing… to want to do such a thing… after what happened to Gérard…_

She knew what she must do. She must email Dr. Griffe immediately and tell him every detail. He had been very clear on Monday: she was to keep him updated, report back to him anything strange.

_“Post-traumatic stress disorder is common – no, expected, Amélie, in somebody who has been through all that you have. You should tell me if you experience anything like that. Don’t go to the Overwatch counsellor. You trust me, don’t you, Amélie? I’ll help you. That’s why I’m here. We’ll get through this.”_

The computer sat closed on her desk. She didn’t feel able to write just now, so crossed to the window and sat on the wide sill, peeking out through the half-open curtains to the room across the road.

The girl with the messy hair was parading around her room choosing clothes. She tried on several combinations of outfit, though all of her attire seemed to be well-worn, bordering on shabby. Certainly Amélie wouldn’t have let that grungy old bomber jacket anywhere near her collection of designer coats. It was… soothing, to watch the girl go about the business of something so normal as choosing an outfit. Amélie suddenly supposed that she better do the same thing too, if she was to meet Angela and Mei at the King’s Head in a couple of hours.

_Can I do it?_ She wondered. The girl fished a pair of pug-print socks from the floor and held them to her nose to sniff them. Amélie recoiled in disgust, and thought that she must go out, if only to balance the scales of fashion and personal hygiene. She stood up swiftly to open her wardrobe. The girl gave a startled jump and dropped a sock, then angrily pulled her curtains closed.

“Your loss, ma chérie.” She whispered, pulling her grey cardigan up and over her head to reveal a slender torso and a lacy black bra. At the centre of her chest, running from the meeting-point of her clavicles halfway to her navel, was a neat white scar. It was raised slightly from the skin around, but faded. Amélie ran a finger down it in habit, gazing at herself in the mirror.

_“Non, Gérard… I don’t want to.”_

_“Why not?” The golden-haired boy asked quizzically, taking his hand away from the hem of her blouse._

_“It’s… you don’t want to see it. The scar, I mean. It’s ugly.”_

_He smiled that broad smile of his. “Oh, Amélie, if it belongs to you, it cannot be ugly. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world. Scars and all.”_

_Amélie’s cheeks burned, but she felt snakes writhing in her stomach. If he saw it, then everything would become real. Of course Gérard knew, but he’d never seen. He wouldn’t want her when he saw. He’d know she was broken, imperfect._

_“If you don’t want to, it’s okay.” He backed off, shifting his weight and moving off her._

_“No! No, I do. I do, but… but it’s so… I’m scared you’ll hate me.”_

_“I promise I won’t.”_

_“Pinky promise?” Amélie asked. Gérard threw his head back and laughed, and she couldn’t think of anybody more handsome. His golden hair in the sunlight, the smile on his face, the adoration in his eyes._

_“We haven’t made a pinky promise since we were six, ma chérie!”_

_He took her pinky in his anyway and squeezed tight. Amélie’s hands were sweaty with nerves. She began to unbutton her blouse slowly, keeping it closed as she went. She took a deep breath and opened the top a little, showing Gérard the scar. He gazed upon it for what felt like hours, making Amélie self-conscious._

_“Does it… disgust you? Why are you staring?”_

_“I’m committing it to memory.” He said quietly, then reached out his hand very hesitantly. “Can I touch it?”_

_“I don’t think… you don’t think it’s gross?”_

_“Gross? Not at all. I think it’s a battle wound. It shows how hard you’ve fought just to be here today, with me. I’m proud of you.”_

_He gently touched the pad of his thumb to the raised bump at the top, between her collarbones. Gérard ran his thumb down it, his touch ghostly light, learning its contours and quirks. When he got to the bottom, he lingered there, looking up into her eyes._

_“You’re beautiful, ma chérie.”_

“… ma chérie…” Amélie muttered in the present, lost for a moment in memories of simpler, sunnier times. A tear burned on her cheek, a betrayal of all of the progress and therapy she’d had from Dr. Griffe. The memory and her vivid vision of strangling the boy left her feeling drained and vulnerable, but she knew that if she did not make an appearance at the King’s Head, Angela would just find her in the Volskaya building tomorrow and make her life difficult. Better to get it over with.

She looked through her wardrobe and picked out something to wear. Dark colours felt more comforting right now. It matched the stormy weather in her mind.

 

-0-

 

It turned out that Lena, the ‘messy-haired girl’, did not end up wearing her carefully chosen outfit at all.

“But c’mon, look, my jacket has the Union flag on it and everything!” She protested outside the door of the King’s Head, pointing to one of her many patches. “I’m representing Team GB, that’s Olympic!”

“You get an F for effort. Everybody else has dressed up! Look, the rhythmic gymnasts have each turned up as an Olympic ring, and when they form a human pyramid, they all slot together! That’s effort, Oxton!”

Genji stood in the doorway, firmly refusing to let them in to the carousing and laughter within. He himself was dressed as a gold medal – a shiny gold bodysuit and a red, white and blue loop over his back like the ribbon. On his chest in marker pen, somebody had written ‘#1’ but with the ‘1’ shaped like a penis. He’d also wrapped his prosthetic legs in bunting.

He saw Lena looking. “I tried to get Hanzo to wear the silver version, but he exploded about ‘bringing shame on our family and our society!’.”

“Well, we can all see you’ve got nothing to be ashamed about, Shimada.” Came a giggling voice from behind Lena and Fareeha. The blonde red-jumper who attacked people with baked goods was there, dressed in a cute white minidress.

“Angie!” Genji bellowed, launching himself into her arms. “So you’ve brought the flour freaks to the pub?”

“I could say you’ve brought the spandex army.”

“I am unashamed of my chiselled, athletic physique!” He puffed out his chest. “And as you’ve seen, two of our fresh recruits aren’t getting into the spirit of fancy dress at all.”

“Tut tut.” Angela appraised Lena and Fareeha. “Not at all a good enough effort. But that’s okay… I’m sure I can help you out, Genji.”

“Just like that?”

“Oh no, I expect you to buy me a drink.”

“I’m sure the Shimada business empire can spring for a pint of lager for a pretty lady.” He winked. “So what did you have in mind?”

“Well, I’m no history student, but I know that it was the Greeks who started the whole Olympics thing.” Lena feared the devilish gleam in Angela’s eye. “Got any bedsheets?”

Half an hour later Lena and Fareeha re-entered the King’s Head dressed in makeshift togas, with laurel wreaths made from newspaper coloured in with green board marker atop their heads. The Athletics Association, who had a whole corner and seven tables to themselves, all clapped and cheered for them. Genji pressed a pint into their hands.

“Thanks for being good sports.” He said, clapping them on the back then turning to the club. “Presenting, two of our new freshers: Lenarica and Fareehaphocles, straight from ancient Greece!”

They found seats amid cries of welcome and shouts of ‘give us a twirl!’, their cheeks burning. Lena went to take a sip of her pint, but Genji stopped her.

“Ah-ah. You’re late and you didn’t come dressed properly. You need to be punished.”

“Punish – what?” Fareeha looked frankly scandalised at the idea of having contravened any set of rules.

“We’re punishing you by sending you on several important and difficult missions.” He grinned evilly, then took two penny coins from his pocket. “First, you have ten seconds to save the queen!”

He dropped the coins in their drinks. They sank to the bottom and the queen of England’s face looked up at them.

“She’s drowning!” He warned them. “Ten! Nine!”

This wasn’t Lena’s first rodeo. She began to chug down her beer, forcing herself not to gag and to ignore the hoppy, slightly-urine-like taste of IPA. The countdown continued, and she took her last gulp at ‘two!’, fishing the penny out of the bottom of the glass and slamming it on the table.

“I’ve saved you, your majesty!” She gasped, burping a little. Beside her, Fareeha choked, spluttered, and went rigid. “You alright, Fareeha?”

She set down the glass and made a motion as if to vomit.

“Holy crabsticks, I think she’s choking!” Lena jumped up and thumped her on the back. With a great garbled cry, a penny coin flew out of Fareeha’s mouth and landed on the table beside Lena’s. There was a moment of stunned and concerned silence, then the whole Athletics Association stood up and bellowed their cheers.

“The queens have been rescued – although Fareeha nearly swallowed her Majesty.”

“That’d cause a scandal.” Lena chuckled. “I’m pretty sure it’s rude to even have the queen in your mouth to begin with.”

Fareeha and Genji both snorted, a small residual amount of beer shooting out of Fareeha’s nostrils.

“A valiant effort nonetheless. Do we think these freshers deserve another drink?”

“Yes!” The association chorused back. A whip went round, everybody contributing fifty pence, and Genji went off to the bar.

“Tonight is going to kill me.” Fareeha whispered croakily, massaging her throat and gulping. “You’ve seen that I don’t exactly handle alcohol well.”

“I’ll be here to help you if you have a few too many.” Lena promised, bumping her arm against Fareeha’s. The contact made her shiver and bite her lip. The warmth spreading in her chest wasn’t just from the alcohol.

To mask how tongue-tied she’d just become, she turned around to look around the pub. The King’s Head was a cheery, traditional London pub, with the added weirdness of a collection of watering cans hanging from the ceiling and several fairly ugly portraits of various British kings.

The bell over the door tinkled and a girl entered and stopped, scanning around. Lena’s eyes widened.

“Fareeha, it’s her!”

“Huh?”

“Look, there, the girl who just came in. I’ve never seen her up close, but I’m sure it’s her. The one I told you about, who lives in the room on the other side of the road.”

“The one you thought was peeking at you?”

“I didn’t say peeking. Just that I’ve seen her at the window.”

“But would it be a bad thing to have _her_ looking at you?” Fareeha asked absentmindedly, staring at the girl. Lena stared too. She was tall and slim, dressed in an immaculate tight-fitting fashionable grey coat. Soft leather boots hugged her calves. Her raven-black hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, showing every sharp angle of her face. She raked the room with cautious amber eyes.

“Why, Lena, are you drooling a little?”

“Shut up, she’s looking over here! Be casual, mate, else we’ll look like right weirdos.”

“We already look like weirdos, furiously whispering and trying not to look at her!”

Luckily, the woman turned in the opposite direction, walking towards where the BakeSoc had set themselves up in the other corner of the pub. Angela greeted her fondly, with a sort of surprised look. Lena couldn’t imagine that such a surly, mysterious girl was the sort for baking, but she supposed each to their own.

“New recruits should not be so obvious with staring at pretty girl.” Grunted the massive Zarya, a lazy grin on her face. She had seven empty shot glasses around her, and as they looked at her she downed another shot of vodka.

“We weren’t –”

“Pah, Zarya knows the signs. I have stared at many pretty women in my time.” She winked heartily at them, slamming the glass down on the table and calling for another. “Now that I am staff and not student, it is wrong to stare. Though I miss it.”

“You went here?”

“Da.”

“What did you study?”

She gave them a sly smile and mimed pulling a zip over her lips.

“Aw, c’mon love, tell us. I bet it’s something unexpected, right? Interior Design or Medieval History or Flower Arranging.”

“In Soviet Russia, degree studies you.” Zarya chuckled, and they knew they weren’t going to get it out of her until she’d had a few more of those vodka shots.

“We’ve got a betting pool going.” Genji mentioned, returning from the crowded bar with two pints of lager for them. “I’ve got fifty pounds on Dentistry.”

Zarya flashed them an evil grin full of perfect white teeth.

Over in the other corner, Amélie was being presented with an entirely different drink, a frankly undrinkable glass of white wine. She sipped it sourly. The British just didn’t understand wine. They never had. But it was free, and she was determined to make the requisite effort to get Angela off her case.

Somehow, one glass of wine became two, which in turn morphed into a bottle. They moved on from the King’s Head to a trendy cocktail bar called Hanamura, with white countertops and abstractly-shaped furniture. Here she was persuaded to try a ‘Cherry Blossom’, a cocktail that tasted delicious and was much more alcoholic than she expected. The vague thought floated in her head that she hadn’t eaten much for dinner, and would become very drunk very quickly if she kept this up. But however hard she tried to refuse drinks or opt out of drink-as-punishment rounds of the Bake-Off pop quiz, Angela hovered around expectantly. She made ‘I’m-watching-you’ gestures at Amélie, who grouchily sipped her drinks, feeling increasingly giddy.

They spotted the Athletics Association again on their way from Hanamura to an American-themed dance bar called ‘Route 66’. They were running down the pedestrianized road trying to show off their athletic skills, doing drunken cartwheels and jumps. She noticed, with a start, the messy-haired girl from across the road wearing nothing but a bedsheet and underwear, hobbling along with her foot zip-tied to a dark-skinned girl dressed the same. A boy dressed in a gold catsuit ran around them, whooping and encouraging them, while a truly gigantic woman with a shock of pink hair swigged vodka from the bottle. Amélie thought how haphazard they were, disorganised and drunk and making fools of themselves. But by the wide smile on every face and the shouts of laughter, she also knew they were having fun.

Suddenly she wanted to have fun, badly. The BakeSoc were content to drink wine and giggle, but Amélie wanted to stand up, she wanted to dance, she wanted people to… to notice her. To look at her and want her. She wanted to feel sweaty and drunk and carefree and… alive.

On impulse, she turned away from the door of Route 66 and started towards the fleeing Athletics group, but ever-watchful Angela swooped down on her.

“Ah-ah. Not sneaking off yet, duckling.”

“I am not sneaking off.” Amélie huffed. Being treated like a misbehaving child was beginning to grate on her.

“Getting a bit restless with the cocktails and chat about boys and baking?” Angela asked as though she could read minds. “Give Route 66 a chance. I’ll surprise you.”

Reluctantly, Amélie entered to the blaring sound of western music. She saw the surprise and groaned out loud.

“Non. Non. Non, non, non. I will not be _line dancing_.”

Angela had other ideas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is chapter 3! Expect next chapter to cover the rest of the night out in all its drama and glory. Thank you again for reading :)


	4. Confidence and Her Problematic Cousins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The big Athletics/BakeSoc night out continues. The chapter is told first from Lena's point of view, then Amélie's. Their nights end rather differently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Thank you again for the overwhelming feedback I've had on this fic. A few housekeeping things:  
> \- As of this chapter, the rating is going up to Explicit.  
> \- This is due to violent and overtly sexual content in the chapter.  
> \- I will issue a content warning for this chapter: alcohol-affected consent, graphic strangling, sexy times. One homophobic slur said by a character. Not necessarily in that order.
> 
> Next the fun bit!  
> There's one absolutely massive easter egg in this story. I swing wildly between thinking it must be incredibly obvious and wondering if nobody will get it. It's to do with the Overwatch canon. For the first person to correctly spot it and comment saying what it is, I will write a one-shot with an Overwatch pairing/situation/prompt of their choice. (I hope I'm allowed to do this on AO3???)  
> Secondly in Argo's Interactive Corner, another chance to get a one-shot. First person to correctly guess what Fareeha's tattoo is in the comments gets the same thing as above. I'm looking to expand my body of work and one-shots are fun, so if you have any ideas for either question do have a go!

The departing Athletics group had decided, on balance of energy levels and drunkenness, that they should head straight to Numbani. Genji decided that Lena and Fareeha should make this journey tied to each other. Lena and Fareeha had each independently decided that this was an excellent and entertaining idea.

“Watch out for that bollard!” Lena cried as they careered left to avoid a metal bollard by the side of the road. They wobbled, but regained their balance.

“Lena,” Fareeha gasped breathlessly, holding onto her for dear life, “I am so much regret right now.”

“You am regret? How can ya ‘be’ regret, love?”

“My nose feels faraway.”

Lena giggled. Fareeha was incredibly drunk.

“It’s here, on your face, stupidface.” She booped Fareeha’s nose as a car swerved to avoid them in the centre of the street, blaring his horn and swearing. “Sod off, wanker!”

“Wanker!” Fareeha agreed fuzzily.

They made it, aching and hopping, to the entrance of Numbani. Genji cut the ziptie keeping their legs together and gave them a short pep-talk about acting sober enough that the bouncer would let them in. They casually walked up, showed their student IDs and their Athletics Club cards (which got them free entry on a Wednesday) and, giggling and trying to walk straight, entered the throbbing darkness of Numbani.

The club was under the main foyer of the Atlas building, a huge main dancefloor with a stage, a raised balcony forming a second level with some seating, and two other dancefloors in smaller rooms off the side playing different music. There was a bar on each level and in each room, which the Athletics lot made a beeline for.

“It’s pretty dead in here because we’re so early.” Genji explained. “But it’s one pound spirit and mixers before midnight, so go crazy!”

Everybody cheered. “Except you, Fareeha, I think you should have some water.”

“He’s a nice, responsible man, isn’t he?” Fareeha slurred, draping an arm over Genji’s shoulder fondly. “I bet my mum wants me to marry a nice, responsible man.”

“Are you propositioning me, Fareeha?” Genji asked.

“No. No, you’re a nice, responsible man, and that’s –” she struggled to find the word she was looking for , “- great. Lovely. But I want… I want a _naughty_ person. I want someone who’ll _piss my mum right off_.”

“I introduce you to some Russian friends of mine.” Zarya offered. “They all ex-prison. Mainly armed robberies, but I can get you arsonist if you want.”

“I think an arsonist might be _too_ naughty, love.” Lena gave Zarya a concerned look and made a mental note to ask when she was sober how exactly she had come to know so many convicts. “But we’ll find you a naughty chap, Fareeeeeha. Farahhh. Reeha. Farah. Pharah!”

“Don’t mess up my name, Oxton.” Fareeha batted her lightly over the head, messing up her hair even more. “It’s Far-ee-ha. Far-ah. No, hang on. Now I’m getting it wrong.”

“Pharah can be your Athletics nickname.” Genji declared.

“Do we get nicknames?”

“Oh yes.”

“What’s yours, Genji?”

“I’m ‘The Dragon’. But don’t tell Hanzo, he thinks he’s the Dragon. I prefer the Dragon over ‘Ratchet and Clank’.” He gestured to his prosthetic legs.

“How did it happen?” Lena blurted out before she could stop herself. She’d been wondering all afternoon.

“That’s for me to know and you to wonder obsessively about. Adds to my air of mystery.” He mimed throwing a smoke bomb and jumped behind a sofa.

“Cuz you’re such a ninja, Genji.”

“He leaps from the shadows!” He stumbled out from the sofa and up to the bar. “True ninjas order sake.”

The bartender gave him a look of utmost hatred. “We don’t serve sake.”

“Then true ninjas order jägerbombs!”

He bought them a round of jägerbombs, which they necked in co-ordination before heading merrily downstairs to the main dancefloor, which was blaring out some classic 90s pop tunes. It was pretty much empty, so the Athletics club oozed out all over the dancefloor and ran around, laughing and giggling. Lena took Fareeha by the hand and began to twirl her around somewhat overzealously. The buzzing voice of alcohol was telling her that she should definitely be trying to get with her beautiful flatmate.

Flatmate. A dim memory fluttered through her mind. It was her mum, talking to her at the local bus stop on the morning she’d departed for Overwatch.

“ _No drugs, no skipping lectures, and no dating flatmates._ ”

Lena snorted at nothing. They wouldn’t be dating. They’d be shagging. She looked at Fareeha, jumping up and down the to beat, and imagined seeing that dark, glistening skin against the union flag of her bedspread. She’d find out what that tattoo was, turning Fareeha onto her front so she could run her fingers down her back…

Other clubs out on socials and flats having inaugural nights out started to make the dancefloor busy. The Athletics Association stayed in a couple of loose circles, the idea not to dance sexily at this stage, but to scream along to the words of awful pop songs from heir childhoods that they knew so well. The Macarena nearly caused a rampage.

Lena excused herself to get another drink with her hard-earned wages, but the main bar was chock-a-block, so she shimmied into one of the side rooms. Here, classic rock and indie was the music choice, and in the other room, slightly sexier R&B tunes blared from the speakers. With two shots in hand, she made her way back towards her friends.

It was getting very busy now, and she struggled to manoeuvre around without jostling people and spilling her drinks. The music pounded in her chest and the alcohol had loosened her inhibitions. She would offer Fareeha a drink, and then they would start dancing together, and she would show her how ‘naughty’ she could be.

At the door between the R&B room and the main room, Lena had to side-step quickly to avoid a rush of rugby boys, all wearing sombreros, ponchos, and nothing else. Disoriented by the parade of shaking maracas, she stumbled through the door and slammed straight into somebody coming the other way.

“Bloody hell!” She cried, dropping one of the shots. The glass bounced, but the alcohol was lost. “Watch where you’re going, all right, mat-”

She was looking straight up at the girl from across the road. She’d checked her coat at the entrance, revealing a form-fitting black and purple minidress. She looked down at Lena with hatred in her eyes and gave a snarl, shoving her out of the way and making a run for the far door, which exited to the smoking area.

Lena was just going to continue, but something about the girl’s rudeness rubbed her the wrong way. The sight of that ponytail running away – this was who’d barged past her by the monk statue on the first day, too! No way she was going to get away with being such an arse.

“Oi!” Lena called after her. She downed the shot, threw the glass aside and chased after the girl. Her blood boiled with alcohol-fuelled rage. “Hey, stop!”

The girl did not stop. She slipped out of the door and into the smoking area. Lena followed, not entirely sure what she was going to do when she caught up. And she would catch up. Lena always caught up.

She found the girl leaning on the wall of the smoking area, gasping for breath and clutching her chest. Her fingertips had gone strangely blue, as had her lips. Her face was contorted with pain and rage.

“Look, love, don’t you run away! Have a little common decency, yeh? That’s twice you’ve barged into me, and I know you’re the one watching me from – hey! I said… are you… okay?”

The girl shook her head, gesturing for Lena to get away.

“No, I won’t! We’ve got words to have, you and me, but if you’re about to be sick or collapse… I won’t just leave.”

“I am fine.” The girl panted. Her voice was low and throaty, the accent strong. “Go back.”

“You look like you’re about to keel over, love.”

“I said I am fine!” She snapped, fixing Lena with a piercing amber gaze. Her free hand formed a rigid claw.

“I won’t just piss off if you’re sick.”

“ _Laisse-moi_.” The girl insisted. She seemed to see something behind Lena. “Bouncer, please, help me. This woman is bothering me.”

A burly bouncer came up behind Lena and put a hand on her shoulder. “Just leave ‘er be, all right? No use you lot rilin’ each other up any more than you already are. Go back inside, that’s a good lass.”

Lena briefly considered fighting the bouncer before her common sense kicked the alcohol in the face and informed her that this was an incredibly stupid idea. She gave the girl a ‘this-isn’t-over’ look, and received a venomous smirk in return, before marching back inside with her fists clenched.

The girl had been rude and gotten away with it. Lena was half-hoping she dropped dead of whatever chest complaint had been hurting her outside. Stupid snobby InterPush students. Thought they could do whatever they liked. Thought they were like royalty. Lena, as a council estate lass, was used to being looked down by city workers and all sorts, but she’d not expected it from spoiled little French girls who couldn’t take a second to watch where they were bloody going!

Practically boiling with rage, Lena went inside, ordered two more shots and headed back to the Athletics lot, who were still enthusiastically dancing to awful noughties pop. She thrust a shot into Fareeha’s hand and swallowed her own. Energy and anger thrummed in her muscles, blood pumping in her ears.

She took Fareeha’s hand and led her a little way away from the others. The dance started chaste and fun, but soon a heavier, more sensual song came on and Lena began to close the distance between them. Her anger at the French girl swirled around her body, transforming into restless energy and desire. She would keep the curtains open tonight, let the French girl know that she was having sex with a beautiful woman while she was sitting alone in the dark being lonely and rude.

“Lena, what’re you…” Fareeha muttered as they came within touching distance. Lena slowly pressed her body against Fareeha’s, bottom to top, until their skin was rubbing together, hot and sweaty. She moved her hands from Fareeha’s to place them on her waist, feeling the muscles tighten.

“You wanted someone naughty, right, love?” She breathed, smelling the soap Fareeha had washed with, feeling amongst the folds of the makeshift toga to find exposed skin.

“But you’re… we’re…”

“Flatmates?”

“Yes. It wouldn’t work out. It would just make things awkward.” Her mouth said one thing, the way she began to subtly grind her hips against Lena’s legs said something else entirely.

“Who says it has to be awkward? You can tiptoe across the landing to my room,” she ran her hands under the toga, up Fareeha’s back, “Through my door,” the fingertips reached the very top of her spine, “Take off your clothes,” They began a slow, tantalising descent down her spine, brushing over each ridge of bone as they went, “And I’ll do _this_.”

She kissed Fareeha just as her hands began to slid past her back towards her bum, the hardened muscle giving way to soft, pert flesh. Their mouths met, Lena reaching slightly up to match their heights. Fareeha’s lips were rough, chapped, and tasted like the shot she’d just had.

Fareeha made an infuriating little sound, like somebody steeling themselves to say something unfortunate. She detached her lips from Lena’s, her whole body taut with indecision.

“It’ll just ruin this friendship we’ve got going…”

“Do you want to keep mumbling on about what ‘might’ happen, or do you want me to do… _this_.”

Her hand under Fareeha’s toga cupped a buttock and squeezed, eliciting a gasp. They were pressed so close together that Lena felt Fareeha’s nipples stand to attention against her chest. She pushed against them, causing friction.

“Lena, I’ve never… never been with anyone before.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes – no – I’m not sure.”

“Want me to help you make up your mind?”

Lena grazed her teeth against the solid line of Fareeha’s chiselled jaw, moving towards her neck. There she found the place where her pulse bounded just underneath her skin, and sucked hard.

“Yes!” Fareeha gasped, her so far unused hands clenching around Lena’s waist. “Show me… show me how…”

Lena found the wall nearby and pushed Fareeha against it, renewing their closeness and pressing the taller girl’s body against the hard surface. Lena didn’t have much experience, but since Derek Davidson’s sister she had done a bit of homework. And by done a bit of homework, she meant done a few women.

They moved with the beat of the song, rubbing against each other. Lena let her hands wander, ghosting in and out of folds of the toga and exploring what they found hidden within. She met Fareeha’s lips again, but this time those fortifications broke down at her lightest touch, inviting her inside to conquer. She slowly introduced her tongue, licking and reaching inside, her lips kneading Fareeha’s sloppily, hungrily. Hot, damp desire bubbled up inside of her, making her want to squirm, to apply pressure. She brought her leg up between Fareeha’s own, gently at first, then more firmly pushing it against the folds of the toga which no longer fully hid her knickers.

“God.” Fareeha moaned, her fingers spasming at Lena’s waist. “Harder.”

“Didn’t you see the sign, Miss Amari?” Lena teased, one hand trailing down from Fareeha’s neck to the painful firmness of her nipple. “It says no heavy petting in here.”

“I don’t care.” The lightest flick of Lena’s thumb over her nipple had her digging her fingernails into Lena’s skin.

“You’d dare break a university rule?”

To her surprise, Fareeha pushed her away with ease. Lena thought, stupidly, that she’d reminded her that she was breaking rules and she was putting an end to it. Instead, Fareeha grabbed her by the wrist and began to dash up the stairs to the exit.

“No heavy petting in here.” She said, breaking out in a run as they left Numbani and started across campus. “But we have a house. With beds.”

“We do.” Lena grinned, the adrenaline of running mixing in with the desire pumping through her veins and pulling her muscles tight. They reached number thirty-nine and crashed up four flights of stairs like they were racing, stopping to kiss violently at each landing until they reached the fourth.

“Mine.” Lena said, fumbling for her room keys. She hadn’t forgotten her intention to make the French girl watch. She had to turn away to unlock the door, but Fareeha pressed into her from behind, clutching at her hips and running her hands up Lena’s flat stomach until she found her bra.

They were in, and the bra was out, tossed over Fareeha’s shoulder in her excitement. Two small, perky breasts poked out from the toga.

“It’s time these came off.” Lena said, undoing her belt and letting the toga fall to the floor. Fareeha responded, tugging hers off, and they stood looking at each other in their underwear. Lena drank in the expanse of dark skin, where Fareeha’s body was hard and muscular and where her form curved softly. She took a step forward and hooked two of her fingers into the elastic waistband of her knickers.

Lena began to tug, bringing her closer to the unmade bed. Then without warning she reversed their directions so she was closer to the door, pushing Fareeha instead of pulling. She wanted to look over her shoulder, out of the window.

Sure enough, there was a low light on in the French girl’s room. Her silhouette stood at the window, and something about knowing she was watching drove Lena mad. She threw Fareeha down on the bed and climbed on top of her, one leg either side so that the mounds beneath their underwear touched. Still straight-backed as if riding on top of Fareeha, Lena began to grind rhythmically, rubbing her crotch against Fareeha’s. The girl below her clenched her teeth and gasped, her hands moving to caress her own nipples. Lena felt the grinding change: they had both become so slippery that they soaked their pants. She didn’t stop. There would be time for tricks later. It wasn’t like Fareeha had a long trip home afterwards.

She continued to twist and writhe on top of Fareeha, her reward moans and cries of lust. Lena looked out of the window, just to check if the girl was still there. She was, unmoving, staring. The thought of it made her insides clench and ache.

“I’m going to win the gold.” She breathed, reaching a hand further down, wanting to perform her best for her one-woman Olympic crowd.

 

-0-

 

Amélie did not count herself a violent person. She avoided confrontation at all costs – because of fear, vulnerability, past experience, whatever excuse she could find. But when the DJ in Route 66 had insisted she get up from her table to ‘dosey-do’, she had felt quite like shooting him in the face.

The BakeSoc were line dancing in all their cringeworthy glory, but it was too much for Amélie. She simply couldn’t bring herself to, and no amount of hounding from Angela was going to change her mind. So she sat and sipped her drink, content to let her eyes wander around the room.

There were other sports clubs in here too. A large pack of rugby boys in ponchos and little else were throwing themselves into the dance, and throwing their freshers around the room. She saw one notice her watching out of the corner of his eye, and a grin spread across his face. He winked. Amélie raised an eyebrow at him, because his stick-on moustache was falling off.

She saw the boy again in Numbani. About half of the BakeSoc made it to the final club, some passing out, others excusing themselves to make tearful phonecalls to boyfriends back home. A few had apologised and said they had to be back in time to catch something called 'D.Va's Gaming Stream', whatever that was. Amélie didn’t quite know why she stayed. Angela had told her she had fulfilled her obligation, and could go home if she wanted.

But Amélie was tipsy, her fears and anxiety dissolved by the alcohol in her system. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do, but she knew she wanted to do something. The loss of Gérard was still too raw for her to even think about pursuing another boy, but it felt nice to be looked at, fancied. When she checked her coat in at the cloakroom and revealed the tight purple dress underneath, she was looked at all the more. These boys – and a few girls – thought that she was gorgeous. They pointed and whistled as she passed. They bought drinks for her. For the first time in a while, a measure of self-confidence returned to her, bubbling up in her abdomen like the glow of a warm hot chocolate on a chilly alpine evening.

Confidence never comes alone when alcohol is involved. It brought its problematic cousin, power. Amélie felt powerful, fawned over, coveted. The feeling was more intoxicating than any drink she’d had tonight.

The rugby boy found her after half an hour, spotting her lounging on the sofas on the mezzanine level of Numbani. She marvelled at his height, his straw-coloured curls, the way his muscular body moved towards her.

“Can I sit?” He asked.

“I do not know. Can you?”

He grinned broadly, removing his sombrero and lowering himself onto the sofa next to her. The pulsating rhythm of the nearby R&B room flowed around them.

“I saw you looking, in Route 66.” He shouted in her ear above the music.

“I saw you looking back.”

He flushed with excitement, leaning closer to her. Amélie checked her surroundings. Plenty of others around if he did anything she didn’t like. Would it be such an awful thing, to play this game, to lead him on? He was so keen, after all. It was making them both feel good. Why stop?

“Tell me,” she purred, “What are you wearing under that?”

In response he pulled the poncho clean over his head, catching the fake moustache and ripping it off. He gave a yowl of pain and clutched his hurt lip.

The answer was nothing. A pair of boxer shorts covered his hips, but underneath the poncho he had a naked, toned chest. It was not unpleasant to look at his muscular frame.

“And what’re you wearing under that?” He pointed to her dress with a cheeky smile.

“That is for me to know and you to find out, mon chér,”

The lust in his eyes stirred something strange in Amélie. He gazed upon her and wanted her, wanted her badly. His body was telling her the same thing, those boxer shorts becoming tight. She couldn’t help herself. Wasn’t Dr Griffe always saying that she needed to work through her feelings, not be afraid of new relationships? It had been a year since Gérard. She couldn’t keep herself virtuous for a boy who was never coming back. There was no point. Dr. Griffe said she should enjoy herself, and she was definitely enjoying this.

The boy edged his hand onto her leg, his palm scorching hot. He was testing the waters, making sure that she was okay with it.

And Amélie was. In that moment, somehow, she’d never been more okay with it in her life. All her worries from before had faded away. She wanted this boy. She wanted to… it took a while to put a word to the feeling. She wanted to possess him. To have him all to herself. If it hadn’t sounded stupid, Amélie could have sworn a small voice in her head told her she wanted to devour him.

He rubbed his hand around her knee, working up her thigh. He was shifting, starting to move closer still, to drape himself across her and kiss her. Amélie was having none of that. He was at her whim. Her beck and call. She snatched at his hand.

“What? You don’t want it?”

“Not like this.” She smiled, and it must have been frighteningly predatory because fear widened his eyes. Amélie drank that in. The tables were turning, and the boy was afraid.

She gracefully flipped herself over, coming to straddle him on the sofa. She pressed him against the backrest, her hands on his exposed chest. She could feel his erection poking through the fabric of his boxers against her thigh. It disgusted her. He should not be receiving pleasure from this. She had not allowed it. He did not deserve it.

“This is so fucking hot.” He gasped, slurring his words slightly. He tried to touch her, to run his hands over her breasts, but she batted them away and pinned them behind his back. He moaned.

What to do with him now, she wondered? He was at her mercy. She possessed him. The rush of power was alien to her, something that felt like it must be entirely new. But where to go next?

It was as if some watching god had heard her unspoken question, as if the thought had triggered some protocol in her brain. She was sure she’d felt this before, this snapping feeling, phasing into a different… different what? Mindset? World? Amélie didn’t know, but she knew with absolute certainty what she should do as if she was being read detailed instructions.

She had to kill the boy.

Amélie looked around for anything to help her. There was no gun. Go to the next tier of weaponry. No knife. Go to the next tier of weaponry. No heavy blunt objects. She would have to use her hands. The target was physically bigger than her, muscular, but drunk and distracted. She reached a hand down to caress the bulge in his boxer shorts, making him go rigid with shock and pleasure. She needed to put him in a position of weakness, of overexertion, and then she could strike.

It did not take long. The mezzanine had cleared of students now, all drawn to the dancefloor by a popular song. They were in a dark corner out of view of the stairs and the bouncers. Amélie reached past the waistband of his underwear and began to work her hand up and down his shaft, motions that she had done many times before.

Before? When had she done this before? She hesitated.

“Don’t stop!” The boy moaned, eyes rolling back in his head. She snapped back to attention. He was close to being vulnerable. She was not to worry about anything other than the target.

“F- f- fuck!” He came violently, muscles bulging and face going slack in ecstasy. Amélie already had her free hand around his neck, applying subtle pressure. She removed the other from his boxers and brought them together. The boy kept on bucking against her, the deprivation of oxygen heightening his orgasm, confusing his mind. A hand fluttered up from where she had pinned it before, weakly trying to push her away. His eyes refocused for a moment, looking up at her. There was no pleasure left now. Just fear. He knew he was going to die. He knew she was going to kill him. She pressed harder.

He gurgled uselessly, the attempt to push her off diminishing to uncoordinated thrashing of his arms. A few more seconds and he would be unconscious. After that she would hold on until he was dead, and she would have succeeded.

Succeeded, yes, but what was the point of this? Why was this her task? Why did the boy have to die?

He slumped, but Amélie had already torn her hands away. She looked at them in horror, pale and trembling from the exertion of clamping down on his neck. A veil was lifted around her, and suddenly the pounding music was back – where had it gone? How had it been so quiet? What was she doing? Who was this boy – why was he unconscious?

She scrambled off him, sensations returning like bullets to the chest. The emotions that had disappeared in the face of the task and the target flooded back. She gasped in horror. This – this couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t have done… done this… could she?

But if this had been her, then didn’t that mean… hadn’t Gérard been found strangled…?

“ _Fuck_.” She choked, looking around. They were alone in their dark corner of the mezzanine. She fished her phone from her pocket. No signal in here. She needed to get outside. Never before had she run faster through such a crowd. The main dancefloor was packed with sweaty, writhing bodies. Panic kept her going, needling at her chest – or that might be the real pain. Amélie wasn’t meant to physically exert herself like this, or to drink this much alcohol. The palpitations fluttered, like her heart was bouncing and crashing against her ribs. It was incredibly hard to draw breath.

She rounded the corner and collided with a body. She didn’t care – she had to get outside now. Earlier than now.

“Bloody hell!” The person swore, a shot glass falling to the floor and bouncing before rolling, empty, under an amp. “Watch where you’re going, all right, mat-”

It was the messy-haired girl, no longer zip-tied to her dark-skinned flatmate. She was dishevelled and drunk, hair sticking up wildly, the bed-sheet toga askew and showing off her toned stomach. A surge of irrational hatred flared into Amélie’s arms, prompting her to shove the girl out of the way. She knew, somehow, for some reason, that the thing she had to do right now was to make a phone call.

The door to the smoking area was visible. She made a run for it, pins and needles changing to sharp stinging pains in her hands and feet. Dimly she heard above the music the girl shouting after her. The smoking courtyard swam in her vision, her mind fogging. She needed to rest and breathe. Her heart couldn’t take this. She slumped, black against the wall, clutching at her chest and drawing in painful rattling breaths.

Amélie reached again into her pocket for her phone, but before she could even take it out, the messy-haired girl caught up, fists clenched in anger. Somebody had drawn all over her left arm with black marker, a union jack near her shoulder, and the name ‘Lena’ down the arm with several cartoon penises accompanying it.

“Look, love, don’t you run away! Have a little common decency, yeh? That’s twice you’ve barged into me, and I know you’re the one watching me from – hey! I said… are you… okay?”

Amélie shook her head – there was no use lying when she knew that she must look an absolute state – but tried to push ‘Lena’ away. She had to make this phone call. Every second she wasn’t making this phone call, the boy could choke and die, the boy could be found, and Amélie would feel the pain of what she had just done.

“No, I won’t! We’ve got words to have, you and me, but if you’re about to be sick or collapse… I won’t just leave.”

“I. Am. Fine.” Amélie insisted through clenched teeth, her breath coming in short, painful bursts. “Go back.”

“You look like you’re about to keel over, love.”

“I said I am fine!” Amélie hissed, glaring at Lena. She hoped, somehow, that her eyes would be frightening, mad, off-putting, so that the stupid girl would leave her alone.

“I won’t just piss off if you’re sick.”

So she was that type. The good type. The saviour, help the needy kind of patronising self-righteous idiot. A small part of Amélie regretted what she was about to do, but she caught the eye of the bouncer over Lena’s shoulder.

“ _Leave me alone._ Bouncer, please, help me. This woman is bothering me.”

The bouncer responded predictably to Amélie’s worried face, her body language. He approached Lena and grabbed her by the shoulder.

“Just leave ‘er be, all right? No use you lot rilin’ each other up any more than you already are. Go back inside, that’s a good lass.”

Lena seemed to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of complaining about this, but in the end retreated back towards the dancefloor. She gave Amélie an oddly purposeful, smouldering look. Amélie could only smile humourlessly back.

“You all right, miss?” The bouncer asked. “Those dykes just don’t know when to stop, do they? Bothering a pretty girl like you.”

“I am fine.” She insisted, and as luck would have it a small fight was breaking out between two sombrero-clad rugby boys opposite.

“Well, he’s not my responsibility! He’s probably gone off with some poor fresher, you know how he is. He’ll be bragging about it all week.”

“Yeh but he’s got my house key! I want to catch the second half of D.Va's stream! You should’ve kept an eye on him, it’s the one fucking thing I asked you to do-”

“Don’t fucking push me, Craig.”

“I’ll push you if you push me!”

The bouncer separated them, but by the time he had finished, Amélie had slipped out of the smoking area and into a side alley, leading her in the end back to the plaza outside the Atlas building and the monk statue. She had already dialled the number without looking and brought the phone to her ear.

It was past midnight even in France, but Dr. Griffe answered in three rings.

“ _Allô, Docteur Thadeas Griffe.”_

_“Docteur Griffe. It’s Amélie. Docteur Giffe, I need your help. Something’s happened.”_

_“What is it?”_

_“I know- I know it sounds crazy… maybe I am crazy… but I think… oh, god, Docteur Griffe, I think I just tried to kill somebody!”_

There was a beat’s pause. _“I see. Have you been taking all of your medication?”_

_“Of course I have! But what do I do? Why am I… why am I calling you? Why… why… you’re my psychiatrist, why did I want to call you specifically… I don’t understand…”_

Dr. Griffe gave a low chuckle on the other side of the line. “ _Still not perfect, Amélie, but you’ve surpassed my expectations. Now, listen to me. Listen to my voice. Are you listening?”_

_“I – I am.”_ Something about those phrases made Amélie feel oddly calm.

“ _You first came to see me when you were little. Do you remember why?”_

The question gave Amélie shivers. She felt like she knew the answer, that it was on the tip of her tongue.

“ _I… When I was a little girl, I think I was…_ ” She made a frustrated noise over the phone. “ _Why is this relevant, Docteur? I did – I nearly killed -!”_

_“Listen to me. Listen to my voice. Are you listening?”_

“ _I am, Docteur, but –”_

“ _You first came to see me when you were little. Do you remember why?”_

_“When I was a little girl, I had a fear of spiders.”_

_“And what did I tell you about spiders?”_

The words came easily now, skittering from her brain and across her tongue.

“ _I was told that they felt not emotion. That their hearts never beat.”_

She compulsively raised a hand to her own heart, beneath the scar from the long-ago surgery. Amélie felt like she was drifting off somewhere, that she was sliding into a comforting darkness.

“ _But now?”_

_“But I know the truth.”_

Docteur Griffe remained silent, waiting for the last statement of the induction. Amélie knew it. She had said it before. How many times? That didn’t matter now.

“ _At the moment of the kill, they are never more alive.”_

The line was quiet for a full minute. Then, Dr Griffe spoke.

“ _Who am I speaking to?”_

_“Widowmaker._ ” Amélie’s voice was completely different. Toneless. Strange.

_“You didn’t do well enough. But you were never perfect to begin with, I accept that. Better than the others, but not perfect.”_ Dr. Griffe sighed as if wondering what to do. _“You will forget tonight. The memories are leaking out already. Let them go. Do you feel them draining away?”_

_“I… yes.”_

_“Your recollection of the events is becoming fuzzy. You’re losing the details, like the seeds of a dandelion blown away by the wind. You won’t remember any of this when you wake tomorrow morning, will you?”_

_“I won’t.”_

_“You will call your father tomorrow and request a plane ticket to return to Annecy for the weekend. You are homesick. You want to see your parents.”_

_“I’m homesick. I want to see my parents.”_

_“You will come to me when you arrive. I will oversee some therapy. You’ve had a traumatic experience. I’m going to help. You’ll forget for good this time. We’ll work through it. You’ll feel so much better, Amélie.”_

_“I feel much better already.”_

She could almost hear the psychiatrist smiling. “ _You’re learning. I’m so proud of you, Amélie. Next time, you’ll finish the task. You will, next time, won’t you?”_

_“Of course.”_


	5. #TogaBooty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout from the big night out hits Lena hard, and the term continues. Number Thirty-Nine plan something special for the end of October.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided just to put a little chapter out since it's a Sunday night and I wrote a lot more yesterday. We're building up to something big coming next chapter, but it's going to take a few days to check and edit.  
> The competition is still on! A couple of wrong guesses so far, the prizes are still up for grabs.  
> Thank you so much to everybody for your constructive criticism, support and enthusiasm. It makes me happy.

Lena’s alarm went off only a couple of hours after she’d fallen asleep. Or passed out. She wasn’t entirely sure.

She turned it off and carefully extracted herself from Fareeha’s muscular arms, eliciting a grunt and a cute little snore. Her shower was, alas, short and sweet, an effort to cleanse the night before from her body and to screw her pounding head back on the right way.

The Watchpoint was, surprisingly, lit when she arrived just after dawn. Where yesterday she’d found Hana slumped on the counter, today she was behind the bar, stood rigid and staring into space. Her eyes were bloodshot and bleary, a smear of something orange on her apron explained by the open pack of ‘sharing’ doritos beside her. Lena guessed that these would not be shared at all.

“G’morning, love.” She attempted her usual cheeriness, grabbing her own apron and namebadge. There was no reply. “Hana? Mate?”

Lena waved a hand in front of Hana. She didn’t respond.

“I’ll leave you be.”

She followed the checklist and set up the coffee shop, then started serving students and professors. This morning she noticed a lot more students who looked more like they were coming back from nights out rather than waking up after sleeping. Amongst them was blonde-haired Angela, the BakeSoc president who had forced her and Fareeha into togas at the King’s Head last night.

“Help me.” She croaked at the counter, slapping a ten pound note down.

“I’m gonna need a more specific order, love.” Lena chuckled. Angela’s hair was dishevelled, her eyeliner smudged, and she was dressed in the white dress she’d worn last night but with a baggy hoodie on top.

“I don’t know. You’re a coffee shop. Sell me coffee.”

“You want a latte, flat white, frappuchin-”

“Just fuck me up with coffee, Oxton.”

Lena knew the customer was always right, and with ten pounds to work with she set about creating a truly awful beverage, setting the extra-large cup down in front of Angela.

“That’s a quintuple-shot caramel latte with eight sugars, chocolate sauce and marshmallows. Oh, and two heaped teaspoons of whey protein.”

Angela took the lid off and downed it.

“That’s going to kill you.”

“Rather that than not being awake enough to answer Professor Adawe’s questions on ward rounds. I hate third year. I’ve got to be there at seven-thirty sharp. I haven’t slept. I think I’m still drunk. I can’t feel my hands. Save me.”

She gave a sort of strangled sob and walked unsteadily off. Lena was very glad she’d never wanted to be a doctor.

“Make me one of those.” The statue of Hana Song had come to life finally, her voice barely a whisper above the hum and hiss of the machines. She was pointing at Angela’s empty cup.

“Hana, no offense, but I think it would actually kill you. Are you all right? You look kind of…”

“I’m a hundred percent. Make me the coffee, noob.”

Lena uneasily made the same awful concoction again and gave it to Hana.

“No energy drink this morning?”

“I drank it all last night and the store was already closed when I realised.” She said mournfully. “How the hell are you so chirpy? I want whatever you’re buffed with. I call hax.”

“I’m just an early bird.”

Hana snorted. “So you’ve left her in bed?”

“Sorry – what?”

“Do you not subscribe to the Overwatch insta feed? Oh, man, you’re in for so much aggro today.”

“Speak English?”

Hana pulled out her phone and opened Instagram, scrolling until she found what she was looking for. “This is the twenty-first century, Lena. Everybody takes photos of everything, especially when freshers are drunk and dressed up. And plus, there was this whole thing about a rugby dude found unconscious and drunk in Numbani, so naturally twitter is buzzing.”

She showed Lena the screen, and to her horror, there she was. She had Fareeha pressed against the wall and was kissing her deeply, their togas dishevelled and leaving far too little to the imagination. The picture had been taken on a crappy phone camera, but there was no mistaking Lena.

“Oh, bloody hell! How many people see this? How can I get them to delete it?”

“How many teenagers use Instagram? How long is a dungeon finder queue? Can’t say. Infinite. But, I have to tell you, that’s some fine booty.”

She pinched and enlarged the photo to focus on Lena’s bum, which was completely on show as the toga had bunched up, hugged by her bright orange girl-boxers.

“Oh, great pissing seagulls.” She swore, head in her hands.

“You’ve started a hashtag. #TogaBooty. I can show you the tweets if you want?”

“I will hold your face under the steamer nozzle.”

Hana giggled and snuck away to play on her phone and drink her heart-attack special. It was karma: Lena had an overall excellent Wednesday, and now she was sure that Thursday was going to fuck her over to even things out.

“Mornin’, chica.” Lúcio danced over to the counter, shaking his headphones from his ears to his neck. “How was last night?”

“Don’t even.”

“That bad? Or, that good?” He flashed a white-toothed grin. “Because I was sure that I heard some sweet music comin’ from your room.”

“Don’t be a perv.”

He wiggled his eyebrows and ordered a green tea. “And maybe you can give me a black coffee to go?”

“I didn’t think coffee was your thing.”

“It’s not. But judging by the #TogaBooty tag, Fareeha’s gonna need some this morning.”

“Wanker! Does everybody on campus know my business?”

Everybody in the coffee shop who had heard her say this turned and nodded solemnly.

“Well, that’s wonderful, go fuck yourselves up the bum with a metal-plated – good morning, Mr. Lindholm!”

Their manager had just walked in, thankfully humming loudly to himself.

“Morning to you, Lena, Hana! My pretty baristas, so enthusiastic!” He patted Lena on the shoulder and commenced his morning checks. Lena kept her jaw clamped shut, which seemed to be Hana’s tactic as well – but mainly to keep herself from collapsing with giggles.

“All is looking good here. Lena, I have contract for you to signing after shift.”

He went into his office and settled down behind his computer. Lena didn’t think much of it until, passing his door, she saw him searching for tweets tagged ‘#TogaBooty’.

Lena watched the regulars in their booths, trying to see if they were all looking for pictures of her bum as well. Professor Amari was writing a strongly-worded email to Vice-Chancellor Wilhelm on the subject of Jamison and Mako Fawkes-Rutledge. She kept having to delete words such as ‘pestilential’ and ‘loathsome’ and replace them with ‘challenging’ and ‘individual’. She’d had four cups of black tea already. Lena wondered what the #TraumAmari hashtag would reveal today.

She now recognised the grey-haired man and his angry life partner. She’d had the misfortune to be sent by Hanzo up to their offices on the third floor of the Atlas building yesterday after practice. The grey-haired man was Jack Morrison, the Student Union Financial Manager. He had an office right next to Gabriel Reyes, the Student Experience Co-Ordinator. Reyes’ job was to liaise with all of the clubs and societies and the student representatives to make sure the Union created a good environment for its students. Morrison’s job was to figure out how to pay for it all.

Lena had knocked nervously on Reyes’ office door clutching a sheaf of new member forms they’d completed for the Athletics Association earlier.

“Come in!” He barked, with a voice like tarry gravel. Reyes was a surly Hispanic man all in black.

“Hello, I’ve come from the Athletics Asso-”

But she hadn’t managed to get even that sentence out before the office door flew open, shaking the frame and actually causing a painting to fall from the wall.

“REYES!” Bellowed the grey-haired man, a boxfile being crushed in his hands. “What is this utter crap? The only way your expense claim paperwork could be less complete is if it was still a tree!”

“What appears to be the problem, Morrison?” Reyes asked with a cackle.

“The prob- the problem? There’s nothing here that isn’t the problem! I mean, why have you authorised a week-long ‘sports tour’ for the volleyball team to Ibiza? What is the ‘Demonic Worship Society’ and why have you applied for a licence to breed livestock for them? How have seven Italian students gone ‘missing’?”

Morrison had been heaving and sweating in rage. He slapped a final piece of paper down on the desk. “And for the love of god, who is suing the University for twenty million pounds for ‘pain and suffering’?”

“Oh, that’s me.” Reyes plucked the paper off the table and tucked in into his in-tray. “Didn’t mean to send that over to you yet. I’m wondering if twenty million isn’t ambitious enough.”

“Enough with this childish crap, Reyes! This is a job, you have to do it, not dick around and make my life hard!”

“I am doing my job. The volleyball team need to go to Ibiza because the International Beach Volleyball Exhibition Tournament takes place there. I did try and veto the Demonic Worship Society, but they threatened to sue on the basis of freedom of religion. And once they were approved as a society, the university club policy grants them a pot of money to get their operations started. If you ask me, the livestock breeding licence is a good investment. Sacrificial goats aren’t cheap.”

Lena thought maybe she should just leave the papers on the desk and run.

“That’s all very well, Reyes, but the seven missing students? That’s serious! You need to call the police, or the Italian Embassy!”

“Oh, well, I thought that it was your responsibility. I received a phone call saying they were being held ransom by some terrorist organisation, and that we needed to pay for their freedom. You’re the financial officer, so ransom-paying is your job, isn’t it?”

Lena shoved the papers into Reyes’ in-tray and made a run for it. She could still hear the shouting echo in her ears the next morning. She wondered how they could be sitting having coffee together now. It had sounded like Morrison had ripped Reyes limb from limb when she was running away.

The mystery of Morrison and Reyes’ mortal feud/tempestuous relationship was something much-discussed over the next few weeks in the Watchpoint. Hana seemed to know everything that went on everywhere – she was hardwired into every app and social networking platform you could think of. If you wanted to the hottest gossip, Hana Song was your girl. Lena learned so much about the university from her colleague.

What she didn’t manage to learn was why Hana was always so dead in the morning. She’d turn up dishevelled and exhausted every morning, sleep until Mr. Lindholm arrived, then occasionally make a coffee while tip-tapping away at her phone. Lena had seen her perk up slightly when Lúcio came in for his green tea, but there was no denying he was a bit of a flirt, throwing winks and dazzling smiles in all directions.

She saw Professor Amari almost every day, usually with her laptop or a stack of books. The #TraumAmari hashtag had been growing steadily since the first day, and as much as Fareeha constantly told her not to check it, Lena had started a small collection of her favourites.

 

**Singhstar**

(@savandersinghss)

honestly #TraumAmari could show me pictures of sea-slugs shagging and I would still listen like my life depended on it

 

**Christian Bayless**

(@bayboi92)

unfh who approved #TraumAmari ‘s lesson plan when she said to the medschool ‘I wanna bring a bonesaw in for shits and giggles’

 

**Xx-Al-Farookie-xX**

(@vaguedinosaursounds)

My prayers go out to the med student involved in the bonesaw accident in #TraumAmari on tues @mirembermefondly

**Mirembe**

(@mirembermefondly)

please all stop saying im dead they sewed both fingers back on fine #TraumAmari #notabigdeal #hospitalfoodsucks @vaguedinosaursounds @bayboi92

 

**Things Prof Amari says**

(@ninjaeyepatchaccountant)

#TraumAmari ‘We didn’t have anaesthetic but a baseball bat will knock someone out just the same’ #lad #Bantamari

 

Fareeha had said “At least they’ve stopped fancying her,” but Hana had laughed in her face.

“Oh, sweet summer child. There’s fanart. There’s a reader-x-Prof Amari fanfiction out there. She’s fairly famous, you know, she’s got a cult following.”

Lena, Lúcio and McCree had gotten drunk on a long, boring Thursday afternoon in mid-October and searched for this fanart. It had been fairly… explicit. So, being the sensitive, reasonable good friends that they were, they’d printed out twenty copies and taped them to Fareeha’s bedroom door.

She had stopped speaking to them for three days.

Lena’s relationship with Fareeha was… odd. That was the only word for it. They were still great friends (except for the mum-porn incident), but whenever they went on nights out, whenever alcohol was involved, they became awkward, embarrassed. Lingering looks. Too-close dancing. They’d slept together a few times more, always drunk, and Lena had always already gone off to work in the morning when Fareeha woke up. They didn’t really talk about it, and they always hung out with at least one other person with them.

Lena was keeping her head above water, just. With her studies, her job, and Athletics, her days were usually packed. She fell asleep most nights after a few seconds, exhausted, and woke up for her early alarm at cock-crow the next morning. Occasionally there would be an afternoon where there was nothing to do, and she would feel completely lost. That was how they’d ended up day-drinking and deciding it was a good idea to post those pictures.

The #TogaBooty trend petered out a few days after it started, but people did seem to recognise her around campus. She’d been outed, of course, against her will, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. It was just lucky that the shadow of the mezzanine above had obscured Fareeha’s face, because Fareeha was not ready to make any decisions or declarations about her sexuality, publicly or privately. Whenever the subject was raised by anybody, or talked about on television, or anything, she would go fidgety and stony-faced, then excuse herself to her bedroom where she would do like a billion push-ups or squats or tricep dips until she had sweated all of her discomfort out.

Lena didn’t see much of the French girl. This was good, because for weeks after their altercation in Numbani, Lena had dearly wanted to punch her in the face. But the curtains of her room remained shut tight, and no ponytailed silhouette could be seen in the gloom behind them.

_Maybe I’ve scared her knickerless_ , Lena thought smugly, _what with the little show I gave her._

The Thirty-Niners had a serious house meeting the week before Halloween. This involved getting drunk in the living room, arguing about people stealing food from the fridge, and deciding that they were going to throw a huge house party for Halloween.

The actual responsibility for pulling off a memorable house party was passed around like an ugly baby – nobody was willing to take it. They hadn’t, however, counted on the unstoppable force of good feelings that was Lúcio.

He somehow rallied a vast network of contacts, worked out some under-the-table sponsorship deals, and spent hours in his room figuring out the DJ set he was going to perform.

“This is my shot.” He kept saying. “It might just be fifty students at the house party, but you gotta start somewhere, don’t you? You never know who might be here. And even if nothing more comes out of it, I’ll still have made people feel good with my music, you know? And that’s the most important thing.”

On the Friday evening of Halloween, Lena returned from Maths for Dumb Engineers with her brain aching, Fareeha behind her trying desperately to reach some last-minute understanding of Professor Vaswani’s mystifying course material by hitting herself repeatedly in the face with her textbook.

“You know that she’ll spring a pop quiz on Tuesday.” She groaned as they unlocked the door. “And if you even do one bit of the workings the way she doesn’t want – what in the-”

They had walked into what appeared to be a haunted house. Black dust sheets had been hung all along the walls, cobwebs draped from the ceiling and across the corridor, fake candles burning in grotesquely distorted skulls or spiked candelabrums.

“You like? I call it: ‘Night to Die at Thirty-Nine’.” Lúcio bounded in from the living room where he was plugging cables in to set up his sound equipment. He was dressed in a weird green and gold costume.

“Are you auditioning to be part of the Wombles on Ice?” Lena asked, prodding the large anthropomorphic suit.

“Eh?”

“Your costume.”

“Oh! Well, when you make music, you need a look, you know, something cool that makes you stand out? Back in Brazil, I used to do lots of underground shows… I was making music in protest. Our government didn’t like it. So I dressed up to hide my identity. Part of the reason why I’m here – my fans and supporters helped me fund this to get away from the Vishkar people.”

“Vishkar?”

“It rings a bell.” Fareeha said from behind the textbook. “They were contracted by the Brazillian government to do that huge redevelopment of parts of Rio de Janiero, weren’t they?”

“How the bloody hell do you know that?”

“Newspapers are for more than emergency toilet roll, Lena.”

“Fareeha knows the plight of the people!” Lúcio gave her a huge thumbs-up. “Yeh, it’s bad. The Vishkar people basically have government backing to come and bust up the favelas, drive the people living there away by arresting them or just violence. So they can build shiny new expensive houses that nobody can live in.”

“That’s awful!” Lena protested. “Surely they can’t do that? It isn’t right!”

Fareeha and Lúcio chuckled, the latter patting her on the shoulder. “Oh, Lena. Money makes people think they can do anything. Right or wrong doesn’t come into it. It’s all greed, and the poor always lose out. That’s why I gotta do something. If I can come to England so the Vishkar people can’t get me, I can raise my profile, get people involved in our struggle. Music is my calling, I gotta use it to help people or I’m as bad as Vishkar.”

“Says the guy about to spend the night as a giant frog.” Jesse McCree ambled into the living room, wearing a pair of pyjama trousers and his stupid cowboy hat. He was rolling a cigarette.

“Says the dude who’s always high before noon.” Lúcio raised an eyebrow and McCree shrugged. Lena didn’t quite understand McCree. She knew he did Film Studies, but it just seemed to her like he watched old black and white western movies all day, smoked a nearly infinite supply of weed, and slammed back whiskey shots whenever he wasn’t doing either of the first two things.

“McCree’s just annoyed he doesn’t have anybody to go to Route 66 with.” Lena teased him. “Apparently you’re due a spot on the Line Dance wall of fame soon.”

“Hey. When I go out to dance, I wanna dance, not that grindy shit ya’ll do.”

“Yeh, but, McCree, line dancing?”

“A man should have his vices.”

“A man should also have more than one t-shirt, and shouldn’t wait a month between washing it.” Fareeha said sourly, pointing out his naked torso. McCree did have rather lax personal hygiene standards.

“Just makin’ sure my goods are on display, darlin’.” He patted his surprisingly muscular abs and winked at her. Fareeha wrinkled her nose.

“McCree, I would not sleep with you if you were the cure for world hunger.”

“Ooohh!” Everybody else chorused.

“Sick burn, sister!” Lúcio laughed, high-fiving Fareeha. “Though I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, Jesse.”

“Eh? Whaddya mean?”

Fareeha had gone very stiff and panicky, glaring daggers at Lúcio. He seemed to realise his mistake quickly – Lena had asked him not to talk about what he knew about her and Fareeha.

“Fareeha could bench you, Jesse. Ain’t no scrawny line dancer gonna get a lady like her.”

Fareeha subtly flexed her arm muscles at McCree.

“Eh, I ain’t gonna get myself tied up over it. A guy can try, right?”

He tucked his spliff into the band of his hat and ambled into the kitchen, no doubt to steal somebody else’s food from the fridge. Fareeha and Lena let Lúcio continue his preparations, as they needed time to shower and get ready for the party.

“Do you want the shower first?” Lena asked politely. Something strange flashed in Fareeha’s eyes. She looked all around and over her shoulder, checking they weren’t watched.

“The favelas are being purged in Rio. The polar icecaps are melting. And there’s a water crisis across the world.” She said, and grabbed Lena by the collar, pulling her towards the bathroom. “We can share the shower. For the environment.”

“For the environment. Sure.”


	6. Night to Die at Thirty-Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The big halloween party at number thirty-nine doesn't go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be publishing two shorter but action-packed chapters this weekend, one tonight, one tomorrow.  
> Congrats to violetnovice, who won one of my competitions by correctly guessing Fareeha's tattoo! I'm working on the one-shot prize, and I think both violetnovice and all of you will very much enjoy it. The prize for the *big* easter egg is still up from grabs, so get guessing!
> 
> Content warning in this chapter for major character injury, a fuckload of swearing, and one homophobic slur said by one character towards another.
> 
> I said things would be heating up, didn't I?

But he wasn’t listening. He drew the bow backwards, one of the skeleton’s plastic femurs nocked like a fat arrow, and loosed it straight at Lena.

Fareeha lunged across the room and slammed Lena down onto the floor. The bone sailed over them, out of the open window, and met glass across the road with an almighty smash. Somebody screamed, and Lena’s heart sank, knowing exactly whose window was directly across from hers.

 

_Thirty Minutes Earlier_

It was inevitable, really. Every engineer, nay, every college-level physicist knows that an enclosed space will only tolerate a certain number of heated, moving particles before their change of colliding becomes almost a certainty. Or, as Lena thought of it in layman’s terms, _teenagers + alcohol + small house = disaster._

Number Thirty-Nine was bursting at the seams with students from King’s Row and all across campus. Lúcio’s DJ set had drawn them in like slightly stumbling moths to a flame. They’d given minimum money, maximum effort to their Halloween costumes, turning up as bogroll mummies, sexy witches, vampires and one memorable pair costume of a man-eating venus flytrap. Whatever they were dressed as, Lúcio had them in a state of euphoria. His music was booming, encompassing, punching through to your chest and infusing you with an amazing, frenzied energy. He worked furiously in his (probably incredibly sweaty) frog costume behind the table, reading the mood, taking requests and somehow formulating infectious mixes of them within minutes. People had come up to him trying to give him tips, but he had sent them away with a flyer for one of several housing aid and environmental charities.

A group had moved the ancient television up to the first floor landing, where it had been hooked up to somebody’s laptop. They scarfed down popcorn and energy drink mixers, hooting and hollering as a cute and strangely-dressed girl streamed a first-person shooter. It seemed that not even a huge house party could stop faithful fans from watching ‘D.Va’s’ stream. Whoever D.Va was.

With the living room turned into a packed dancefloor, others had migrated to the kitchen where a number of raucous drinking games had taken place. Lena had, unfortunately, drawn the last king and had to down the dirty pint at the end of ring of fire. It had been a mixture of McCree’s neat whiskey, Angela’s red wine and Mei’s awful cinnamon liqueur. It was quite surprising to everybody just what a tolerance to alcohol Mei, who was a fairly petite woman, possessed.

Lena had held on through several rounds of Cards Against Humanity and narrowly escaped losing her underwear in strip charades (which is a thing). McCree had ended up stripping it all off, almost gleefully, and Lena felt sure he would end up as #CowboyPenis on the Overwatch Social Media Hub tomorrow. She’d left the table unsteadily, clutching her now-famous toga (artfully ripped and covered in fake blood to suit the Halloween occasion) to cries of ‘Hashtag Toga Booty is defeated!’

She clambered up the stairs, finding yet more groups of chatting and partying students on every landing, and on the stairs, and that all the bathrooms were mysteriously locked. Finally, she alighted at her room and jumped onto her bed, landing with a loud _kerplumpf!_

The thudding bass of the music from downstairs was a pleasant, distant tickle this far up. She let the bloodrush and the dizziness of the alcohol wash over her, feeling fuzzy and satisfied. She hadn’t expected so many people to come, and to come because of her. Genji had turned up already ‘hella lit’, as Hana would have said with Zarya, several athletics friends and a very reluctant Hanzo in tow. Genji and Zarya had been the pair costume venus flytrap, and even though she had seen it in person Lena still wasn’t sure how they were pulling it off. Hanzo had been, from what Lena could understand, physically dragged here from the archery range. He still had his bow slung over his shoulder and was sweaty from exertion.

“The evening is the only time I get the range to myself!” he was raging at his little brother at the door, “I have no time for all these drunken parties, Genji. I’m a third-year and the Athletics captain. I have a lot of responsibility, I can’t just –”

A combination of Lúcio’s infectious music, Genji’s infinite ability to get people drunk and a streak of very bad hands in shot poker had turned stick-up-the-arse Hanzo into drunk-and-weepy Hanzo, who was currently curled up on Lúcio’s bed ‘resting his eyes’. His bow, which he’d been complaining was ‘a piece of precision sports equipment, worth more than your whole degree’, was propped against the wall outside the door. Nobody had come up as far as the fourth floor landing yet.

Angela, Mei and a posse of ‘BakeSoc Babes’ had gate-crashed after being “assured by Genji that Lena has personally invited all of us”. Mei thrust a tub of homemade ice-cream and a bottle of amaretto into Lena’s hands, apologising profusely as Angela ploughed through the crowd in her sexy devil costume. Not that Lena was complaining – Angela could drag her to hell any time. Plus, Angela had somehow stolen a fully articulated skeleton on wheels from the medical school, which had caused much hilarity downstairs. It was now covered in sharpie-drawn penises and wearing nothing but a pink feather boa and McCree’s Stetson.

A quiet, purposeful knock roused Lena from her dreamy contemplations.

“Ello?”

Fareeha pushed the door open and poked her head inside. “Are you all right, Lena? I saw you stumble upstairs.”

“’M fine, love. I’m well happy. Come give us a cuddle.”

She held out her arms and gave Fareeha a sleepy grin.

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“It’s just a cuddle, ‘Reeha.” Lena flailed her hands needily. “If you gimme a cuddle I won’t mention you practically dragging me into the shower earlier-”

“I didn’t ‘drag’ you, you practically sprinted –”

“- had your wicked way with me against the tiles –”

“- well there isn’t much space in student halls showers, it was the wall or we both train as circus contortionists –”

“ – just gimme a fucking cuddle, you dopey albatross.”

Fareeha gave a great sigh, but looking at drunk, hug-happy Lena softened her heart a little. She took off her shoes and politely hung up the long vampire cape she was wearing and tucked herself into bed beside Lena. The sprinter gleefully koala’d her long-suffering flatmate.

“This doesn’t mean anything, Lena.” Fareeha warned.

“’Course not. But it’s between you, Lúcio and McCree. I don’t trust McCree not to stick his revolver in my holster, and Lúcio’s currently a giant frog. So you’re just dandy.”

Lena felt Fareeha slowly relax next to her, their breathing syncing. She was halfway to sleep when the sounds from downstairs changed.

The music faltered for a second. Happy squeals and the roar of students all singing along became raised, angry shouts. Something fell from a great height and thudded on the floor.

“Wassat?” Lena asked, yawning, one eye opening.

“Perhaps they’re getting a bit rowdy downstairs.” Fareeha said, untangling herself and putting on her game face. If there was a situation she relished, it was ‘people getting a bit fighty’, because it legitimised all the time she spent working out and redrafting her six-hundred page code of justice.

Fareeha was at the door and Lena just pushing herself out of bed when crashing footsteps rose in volume signalling the arrival of trouble on the fourth floor.

“This is it, Makes.” Came the wheezy voice of Jamison Fawkes-Rutledge, the unsuccessful pickpocket from their very first day. Lena had seen him and his brother around, sulking, throwing paint balloons and smoking in no-smoking areas like the badasses they clearly were.

“D’ya know which room, Jamie?” Mako asked.

A door flew open. “Not this one, some topless bloke snoring. The others’re open… so it’s gotta be thirteen.”

Fareeha quietly slid the bolt across the door, tense, ready to spring.

“Wass this, Jamie?”

“Dunno mate. Oh, ‘ang on. It’s his bow! The bloke what nearly shot me last month. Well, he shouldn’t leave it ‘ere. It’s mine now. And bloody ‘ell, Makes, leave that fucking skellie alone.”

“I like it.” Mako said, accompanied by the rattling of plastic bones. “It’s mine now too.”

“Well stop tryin’ ta shag it for two minutes and help me get this door open. Oh, she’s in for a surprise, that fuckin’ gronk.”

Mako smashed against the door, splintering the hinges and pulling the lock out slightly, the nails that held it in straining.

“’S locked, Jamie.”

“Well she’s up here for sure. They said they saw ‘er come up.”

“Jamie, do we really have to…?”

“Look, Mako, stop fucking thinkin’, aight? You ain’t good at it. Now bang the door again. Bet she fuckin’ locked it when she heard us come up.”

“But I don’t wanna hurt Prof’s daughter. Prof’s always nice to me.”

Jamison heaved a huge sigh. “Yeh? And Prof sent the letter to Dad all the same. Now we got no money, and we’re on probation, and I ain’t fuckin’ going back to Oz!”

“I don’t wanna go back.” Mako agreed. “But won’t dad get more mad if we hurt Prof’s kid?”

“Oh, Mako, jesus! You know he’s gonna send us back anyway, don’t you? It’s only a matter of time. An’ when we get back, you know what’s gonna happen?”

“The Junkers are gonna kill us, Jamie.”

“Damn wanking right they’re gonna kill us! Wouldn’t matter where we hid, or if we cowered in the embassy like fuckin’ frogs, they’d get us because of dad. They tried already, remember? That’sa why I’ve got a peg-leg!”

Mako began to sniff. “But we got more chance of staying if we don’t-”

“Listen to what I’m sayin’, Makes! We’re goin’ anyway, so we might as well get even! Now ram the damn door, you stupid pig!”

But Mako was sobbing now, accompanied by the sound of the skeleton jangling. Fareeha and Lena, frozen in place, quickly looked at each other. They had to escape, and fast.

“Window!” Fareeha mimed as Lena was closer. She took the cue and snuck over to it, carefully undoing the blinds and unlatching it. She pushed it up with the most care she had ever given to anything, wincing at every clunk and squeak.

“Oh, you great blubbering mess, I’ll fuckin’ do it!” There was a sound oddly like Velcro ripping off, a hop, and then a smash as Jamison broke their lock with a blow from his prosthetic leg.

Jamison hobbled in, using Hanzo’s bow as a crutch. He saw Lena and Fareeha and broke out into a broad grin.

“Well now, ladies.” He wheezed. “Looks like we’ve walked in on something, doesn’t it, Makes?”

Mako didn’t reply, wiping his eyes with one of the skeleton’s leg-bones.

“Turn around and leave.” Fareeha said evenly, standing in front of him. Her body was tensed, ready, shoulders thrown back and muscles rippling. Jamison was scrawny and currently one-legged. He should have been intimidated, but there was something mad in his eye, the desperation of a man already dead.

“But we just arrived!” he cackled. “And we’ve got words for you, Far-ee-ha. See, you went and ratted us out in freshers’ week, and your shouting got dear old Prof involved, and she wrote a nasty little letter. So we’re angry.”

“Please register a complaint with the University if you feel you’ve been wrongly treated by a member of staff.” Fareeha said, again tonelessly. Lena didn’t think this was the time to be quoting the student guidebook. It would only egg them on more. But she knew Fareeha well enough by now to understand that she didn’t do emotional appeals.

“Nah, think I’m all right with just makin’ you regret grassing us up.” He smiled nastily, then lashed out surprisingly fast, sweeping Hanzo’s bow around in a punishing arc. Fareeha leapt backwards the avoid the blow but tripped on Lena’s bed, crashing down onto the frame hard with an awful thud. She cried out in agony, contorting and trying to clutch her back.

Jamison giggled and stepped forward.

“Tryin’ ta leave out the window?”

“Please, don’t do this. Fareeha’s hurt, we need to call an ambulance.”

“I don’t give a gnat’s dick if she’s broken every bone in her spine!” Jamison hissed. “Maybe she’ll be easier for you to fuck if she’s paralysed, eh? Less resistance?”

Blood boiled in Lena’s ears. She clenched her fists. He had no right. No right at all to say these things. This was just needless, stupid violence. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t just. He was going to ruin their lives!

“Oi, Makes, hand me that.” Jamison took the leg-bone from his brother and tried it out in the bow. “Hah! I always thought that all you dykes need is a good boning!”

“Stop! Just, stop! Please!” Lena begged him, backing up but only finding the windowsill.

But he wasn’t listening. He drew the bow backwards, the skeleton’s plastic femur knocked like a fat arrow, and loosed it straight at Lena.

Fareeha lunged across the room and slammed Lena down onto the floor. The bone sailed over them, out of the open window, and met glass across the road with an almighty smash. Somebody screamed, and Lena’s heart sank, knowing exactly whose window was directly across from hers.

 

-0-

 

Being a medical student came with certain perks. Angela consistently felt slightly more important than everyone else. She got NHS discounts at dominos. And she usually only had to say “I’m going to be a doctor” in order to guarantee closing the deal with her prospective partner of choice.

However apart from the very long days split between lectures and working on the wards, the incalculably high debt of a five-year degree and all of the events she had missed out on because she was working, there was one other downside. And that was when something went wrong at a party, as it inevitably did, somebody would ask if there was anybody medical present, and it would be her.

“Help! Help!” Lena came tumbling down the stairs, white as an actual ghost (not Mei’s bedsheet costume), her hands shaking. “Angela, help, please!”

“What is it?”

“It’s Fareeha! It’s… maybe somebody else too. We need to call an ambulance. You need to do the… the ABC thing.”

“First aid?”

“Please, come on!”

Angela placed her winning shot poker hand down sadly and followed Lena up the stairs. Her instincts kicked into action, the pleasant alcohol fuzz clearing, bringing her into perfect sobriety.

She had no idea what to expect when she entered Lena’s small bedroom. Fareeha, Lena’s friend on the Athletics team, laid on the floor rigid as a post. Her breath came in short pants. Sweat drenched her body and she shook and shuddered from holding herself in an odd position.

“Fareeha? Fareeha, are you okay?”

“My back.” She growled through clenched teeth. Every breath and noise spoke of exquisite, awful pain. “I – I can’t – help me.”

Angela turned to Lena. “Call that ambulance. Now. Fareeha, we’re calling an ambulance. They’re going to help, okay? But I just need to make sure that you’re breathing okay.”

Angela ran through her ABCDE first aid checklist methodically, assuring Fareeha and explaining everything she did. She’d always been like this. When the challenge presented itself, she became focused, calm, confident. This was not Angela’s first medical emergency. By far. She was able to inform the paramedic dispatcher over the phone of the basic observations.

“What did you mean by ‘maybe somebody else too’, Lena?” She asked once she was sure that Fareeha wasn’t in mortal danger in the next couple of minutes.

“It’s – Jamison fired Hanzo’s bow out of the window. It smashed the window opposite. There’s a girl who lives in that room. I think I – I heard her scream, but her light isn’t on and I can’t see any movement.”

“ _Scheisse_!” Angela swore uncharacteristically. One patient she could deal with. Another with unknown injuries across the road? Impossible. She needed to stay with Fareeha and stabilise her back, hands holding her in position. “Lena, you have to go.”

Lena blinked. “Me?”

“Yes, you. I need to stay with Fareeha. She’s being really brave, but she needs somebody to watch her while the paramedics come. You saw me do the first aid checks, yes?”

“Yeh.”

“Can you remember what the A-B-C-D-E stands for?”

“Airway, Breathing, Circulation… um… Disability and…”

“Exposure. Good. Go over the road. Keep your phone. If you need to, call another ambulance, but I’ll inform the paramedics when they get here that we might have another injury.”

Lena’s whole body had gone numb. She stepped out of her room and walked across to the door to the fire escape, open now that Jamison and Mako had escaped through it what felt like two seconds ago. She descended the stairs and circled the building to stand in front of number thirty-eight.

The French girl lived in the top room. Lena hated her. She was rude and vindictive and just… unpleasant. But that didn’t mean that she shouldn’t help her, right? What if she was really injured, and Lena had just left her out of spite – that would be worse than shooting her herself.

The door to thirty-eight was ajar, stopped from closing by a brick. Lena knew that some of the thirty-eighters were at the party opposite and wanted to make sure they could nip back home without fiddling with keys. The house was dark and quiet, a mirror image of her own but with the details all wrong. She climbed up to the fourth floor and hesitated outside the closed door to room thirteen.

“’Ello?” She knocked. No reply. “Ello? Um, are you there?”

Then she heard a faint groan, weak and pitiful. Lena pushed up her dishevelled toga and prepared herself for some breaking and entering.

The door was locked, as expected, but the bolt was oddly rattly as if somebody else previously had banged it loose. It only took a good, well-aimed kick to break it and allow her entry.

The girl’s room was again a strange mirror of her own, but they had polar opposite tastes. Everything in here was elegant, understated, with dark colours and rich, sumptuous fabrics. No posters adorned the walls, and the desk and corkboard were clear of personal knick-knacks. In the darkness, she nearly missed the girl on the floor.

She must have been standing right next to the window when the bone had hit, because she was sprawled directly below it covered in broken glass. The bone itself was on the floor beside her, its end bloody. Where the girl had thrown up her right arm to defend herself, it was sliced open, dark blood oozing out onto the carpet.

“Hello? Hello?” Lena inched closer. The girl groaned again. “Can you ‘ear me? Are you okay?”

“ _Non_.” It was almost sarcastic. The word seemed to mean ‘ _of course I’m not okay, I’m a glass pincushion with a welt the size of Jupiter growing on my forehead, you stupid girl’_.

“I’m going to call the paramedics.” Lena fumbled with her phone, nerves making her babble. “Get the real forces in. They’ll come in their ambulance, like knights in the cavalry. They’ll come get you all better. You just stay there, okay?”

Lena stuttered through the call to 999, explaining what had happened, doing what they said. The nice lady on the other end of the phone guided her through first aid.

“Do you know her name? If you can call her by her name, it’ll help a lot.”

Lena realised she didn’t. She scrambled around for something identifying, and found the girl’s handbag. In her wallet, she had a French driving licence.

“Amélie Lacroix.” She read. Amélie apparently disapproved of her pronunciation, tutting loudly. “Oi, you’re not in a position to complain.”

Lena was going to put the wallet down when she saw a crumbled, much-folded, dog-eared polaroid photograph tucked underneath several credit and membership cards. It showed a girl who must have, in a past life at least, been Amélie, with a golden-haired boy and both of their families at the seaside. On the back, it said

 

_Pour toujours, ma chérie_

Lena didn’t know quite why, but it made her sad.

She quickly tucked it back in and stowed the wallet, feeling guilty.

“Er, Amélie?” She shook the girl by the shoulder. She seemed to have passed out, her lips and fingertips tinged a strange, unhealthy blue. Was this from the glass, or getting hit in the head? Was she okay? Lena felt for her pulse. It was there, but odd, fluttery.

“Amélie? Hey, don’t start snoozing on me! You’ve finally got me here!” But Amélie remained limp, her breathing shallow. “Oi! Oi, wake up! Or who’s going to crash into me, eh? Amélie? Oi! You haven’t shoved me in enough places yet, love! The library’s nice, I hear. And I work at the Watchpoint – the coffee shop. If you crashed into me there you’d cause a lot of damage. Hey – hey, open your eyes! Amélie!”

Sirens pierced the hubbub of Halloween partying in the street. Lena breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank god. The cavalry’s here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second half of this is coming tomorrow night. Stay tuned!


	7. The Wrong Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second half of the night of Halloween. Please enjoy, and leave kudos or a comment if you'd like :)

“Are you coming?”

The green-uniformed paramedic beckoned to Lena from the inside of the ambulance. She hesitated on the road.

“Come on, we need to go. You’re her friend, right? She’ll need some support.”

“I’m not her friend.”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugged and started to move back into the rig, telling the driver to start the engine.

Lena changed her mind just as the doors were slammed in her face. The ambulance revved up and moved away.

“Oi! I changed my –”

But the blue lights were flashing and the siren blaring as the ambulance gathered speed. Lena started to run after them, but cursed as they sped up and exited the wrought-iron gates of the university. Guilt slapped her in the face. Amélie wasn’t her friend, far from it, but you needed somebody in hospital. What if she woke up and didn’t know what happened and just saw doctors and panicked? Lena should have gone. She should have done the right thing, not let a petty grudge win.

“Hey, Lena.”

A car rolled up beside her, an awful bubblegum-pink Fiat 500 covered in stickers and logos. Driving it was none other than Hana Song. Lúcio sat in the front passenger seat, his frog head on his knees.

“What the blazes is that?”

“This? It’s clever investment and hella sponsorship deals. Get in the back.”

Lena did as she was told, squeezing into the cute little car. She wasn’t sure if her drunk, overwrought brain was hallucinating this. It made not sense. As Hana slammed her foot down on the accelerator pedal, Lúcio rotated in his chair to face her.

“When I saw what happened, I knew you’d wanna be there for Fareeha. So I texted Hana to give us a ride.”

“I cancelled a stream for this.” Hana grunted, and Lena suddenly noticed that she looked completely different. She’d thought it was a Halloween costume, but this was a completely different Hana to the greasy-haired, Dorito-fingered coffee goblin she knew. Hana was wearing a cute blue and pink onesie and apparently nothing underneath. She had her hair immaculately styled and fixed with copious amounts of hairspray, with heavy makeup and pink facepaint whiskers. She looked strangely familiar to something Lena had seen earlier that night… on the television at the party…

“You’re D.Va!” Lena gasped.

“Give the girl a prize.” Hana grunted, executing a nauseous handbrake turn through a red light to get them onto a dual carriageway, the flashing blue lights of the ambulance just in view far in front of them.

Thoughts of Fareeha and Amélie were momentarily driven from Lena’s mind at this newest development.

“But… but D.Va has hundreds of thousands of subs and followers… she’s like a celebrity! She plays in tournaments all over the world! Why are you working in a coffee shop?”

“Do you know how much a high-spec custom gaming rig costs? Airfares? Bandwidth? A personal assistant to manage my social media profiles and a nerd write my papers for me? I’m struggling to break even on my crummy sponsorship traps and working at that dump.”

“She’s a self-made woman.” Lúcio winked at Lena.

“And… hang on. Why do you have Hana’s number, Lúcio?”

“D.Va’s hella famous. We got talking at the Watchpoint. She’s helpin’ me raise my online profile.”

Right-o, Lena thought dazedly, that was enough of an explanation for now. She slumped back on the seat as Hana navigated a roundabout at about 50 miles per hour. The centrifugal force was enough to make Lena wonder if she herself needed a doctor – she was sure her organs had been crushed against her ribcage.

They arrived in the hospital car-park and Hana executed a perfect bay park into a disabled bay right at the entrance to Accident and Emergency. From his pocket Lúcio produced a valid disabled parking permit that said that this violently pink Fiat belonged to ‘Mr. Genji Shimada’.

A&E was busy. A single, dead-eyed receptionist stared at them like they were the harbingers of the apocalypse, and Lena belatedly realised that they were three students in a toga, a frog costume and a onesie: a receptionist’s worst nightmare.

“Welcome to Alderworth Hospital Accident and Emergency, how can I help you?” He said in a voice that told them plainly he wasn’t paid enough to deal with this shit at 2am.

“Our friend got brought in by ambulance.” Lúcio explained. “Fareeha Amari. From Overwatch University.”

He tip-tapped at the keyboard. “Is she the back injury or the arm laceration?”

“Back.”

“If you could please take a seat in the waiting area, I think a lady is already here who came with her.”

In the waiting area they found a very stiff shocked-looking Angela. She’d taken off her devil tail and was wringing it nervously in her hands.

“Oh, thank god you’re here.” She saw them and jumped up, giving Lena an unexpected hug. She hadn’t thought she and Angela were particularly close, but suddenly, with her arms around her, Lena realised that she needed this hug so badly. She gripped tight, the hot, tight feeling of tears welling up from her chest into her eyes.

“Is Fareeha… I mean, she’s tip top, right? No harm done?”

“They’ve taken her to do some scans. She can feel them touch her toes, which they say is a good sign. Other than that I don’t know, they wouldn’t let me go any farther even when I said I was a medical student and I work at the hospital and I have an access card and everything and _what the hell happened, Lena_!”

Angela had camped down on her arm unexpectedly. Something about the gesture of weakness from the usually strong, confident med student made Lena blurt out everything, from the incident with Jamison and Mako on their first day, to the reason she’d been alone in her room with Fareeha in the first place, to all the horrifying details and the conversation they’d overheard between the brothers.

“What’s this girl you keep mentioning? The ‘French girl’?”

“That’s, um, Amélie. I only just found out her name. She’s –”

“She’s in my BakeSoc. Quiet type. I’m trying to get her out of her shell, socialise and have fun, but I don’t know what kind of baggage she has.”

“I hope she’s okay. I should’ve gotten into the ambulance with her. I was really shitty. Petty. If something happens because I was a shitty, spiteful cow –”

Lúcio put his arm around her shoulders and she found herself crying into his costume. She heard the sound of Fareeha smashing against the bedstand, her cry of pain, eyes wide and terrified. The sight of Amélie on the floor in the dark by herself, the victim of circumstance, who’d been hurt by the situation Lena had created. And Fareeha had jumped to push her out of the way of the bone arrow even though her back was hurt. What if that had made it much worse? Lena had seen on TV, people paralysed from the waist down, in wheelchairs… It would kill Fareeha to be stuck in a chair all day. She liked to run and jump and work out. She couldn’t be hurt badly. She couldn’t be bedridden. It just couldn’t happen, especially not because Lena hadn’t moved fast enough, because she’d had to lunge to save Lena…

“Oh god!” She sobbed, unable to control herself. “This is my fault! If I hadn’t’ve stood still like a right numpty, if I’d’ve talked them down, if I’d –”

“This is not your fault, Miss Oxton.”

They all looked up to the new voice. Before them stood none other than Professor Amari, a dressing-gown over her checked pyjamas, her long white hair tumbling over her shoulders. In the harsh hospital light all of the mystery and hype around her from her on-campus fame fell away to reveal an aging, war-ravaged mother of a girl whose life might soon change forever.

“P-professor Amari –”

“Ana, after hours.” She smiled kindly, but nothing could shift the haggard wrinkles of worry. She took a seat opposite them. “I received a call from the hospital a few minutes ago and came straight here. Incidentally, whose is the pink car double-parked in the disabled bay?”

Hana put up a guilty hand; nobody could lie in front of the patented #TraumAmari stare.

“Well, I’m glad. It shows that you rushed here, and I’m glad Fareeha has friends willing to be seen riding in that awful car in order to be there for her.”

Ana turned to Lena specifically. “Could I speak with you in private, Miss Oxton?”

Lena dazedly followed Ana out into the chilly night air, glancing back over her shoulder to the others and unable to provide them with anything more than a mystified shrug. Professor Amari may have been several inches shorter than Lena and wearing fluffy slippers, but this felt awfully like being taken into the corridor by a teacher to be told off.

“I’m told you were in the room when it happened. I understand it may be uncomfortable for you, but could you recount the events that led to this for me?”

Lena caught herself mid-sigh of relief. She’d been worried about being shouted at, or worse, that Professor Amari was concealing that bonesaw somewhere about her person. She explained about Jamison and Mako trying to get revenge for Fareeha getting them in trouble, leaving out some small details to make it sound conveniently like she and Fareeha had just been having a friendly housemate chat. Professor Amari listened attentively, nodding and encouraging her, assuring her that she bore no blame for any of this.

“It is in fact my fault. I had no idea that Jamison was capable of this sort of thing. A troubled boy, certainly, but to attack like that… I shouldn’t have interfered or sent that letter. If what you overheard is true, I need to make things right.”

“But what about Fareeha?” Lena hadn’t heard much motherly concern thus far, and was beginning to suspect that Fareeha had inherited her ‘justice at the expense of emotion’ mentality.

“She has good sensation in all her lower body dermatomes as well as plantar and patellar reflexes. This indicates that her spinal cord is unaffected, and she has likely fractured one or more vertebrae. I would have performed a posterior fusion, as it is minimally invasive, but the surgeon on her case has opted for posterior rods for safety’s sake.”

Lena had understood the word ‘spine’ and not much else, but nodded because that seemed the thing to do. “So she’s broken her back?”

“Yes. I suppose she has. My daughter has broken her back.” Ana seemed startled at the sound of her own voice saying the words aloud. She tensed up. “Excuse me. I must speak to the surgical team.”

She walked off quickly, pulling an ID badge from her pocket as she went and beeping herself through the access-controlled doorway past the reception area towards the operating theatres. Lena wandered back inside and sat with Lúcio, Hana and Angela.

“Did she get mad at you for doing her daughter?” Lúcio asked curiously. Beside him Hana muffled a giggle behind her hand and Angela’s eyes boggled in shock.

“No. She didn’t even ask why we were in the room together. She seemed more concerned about the surgeon’s decision to do a… well, I’ve forgotten, but there were rods involved.”

“First time Fareeha will have had a rod in her, then.” Hana muttered, practically choking on her own laughter. Lúcio lightly punched her in the shoulder to admonish her.

“No making fun of them, Hana. I think they’re hella cute together.”

“Oh, no, no no no, we’re not, y’know, together. Just shagging. I mean, well, we’re mates as well, but not, y’know, ‘girlfriends’ or anything.”

Lúcio raised an eyebrow at her. “Not ‘girlfriends’? Then why did she change her facebook cover photo from a sunrise with a motivational quote to the pic Genji took of you two with your legs tied together in freshers’ week?”

Lena glared at him, but saw behind him that Angela was looking scandalised. For a moment she worried that Angela was going to say something hateful or homophobic.

“She’s gay?” She hissed eventually, running her fingers down her face. “Why did nobody tell me this before?”

“Why would we have? It’s Fareeha’s decision to come out or not come out or whatever she wants to whoever she wants, cake demon lady.” Lúcio said.

“And did you not see the #TogaBooty candid? It’s clearly the muscly Arabic chick pinned under Lena.” Hana added, finding it on her phone and waving it in Angela’s face.

“I don’t have twitter.”

This, more than anything, seemed to shock Hana, who immediately whipped out tablet and started signing Angela up for what she called ‘the most fun you can have in under a hundred and forty characters, excluding hella condensed porn’.

“Why’re you all tied up about it?”

“Because I would have… if I’d known… I mean, I suspected, but…”

“You’ve stopped making sense.”

“To summarise: she’s hot, I would have jumped her by now.”

Shocked silence followed her admission, and Lena saw Angela in a whole new light. She’d thought that she was a busy, slightly grumpy and evil but mostly neutral good med student. Now, though, she had a vivid and guilty mental vision of Angela gathering a cult of women around her, feeding them cake until they loved and worshipped her, dragging vulnerable freshers into her sugary orgy cult. When the image of a lingerie-clad Angela stuffing gooey chocolate gateau into her mouth with sticky fingers made her squirm in her seat, she reminded herself she was in hospital and Fareeha was probably having her spine drilled into.

“Perfect.” Hana said, lifting her fatigued fingers from her tablet. “You’re all set up, and I’ve livetweeted this conversation to get you started.”

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

just want to tell everyone at @Overwatchuniofficial that I’m a single pringle and I’m ready to mingle

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

the key ingredient to my signature victoria sponge is a fit girl called Victoria and I am the sponge hit me up in the dms #single #cake

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

My ideal lady? 5’11’, arms like well-fed pythons, will eat cake in exchange for sex #single #cake

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

Chillin out thinkin about corrupting young women with baked goods and totes addicted to @DVaGaming’s YT channel #Dvastream http://bit.ly.445_YdTT5…

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

Wow @DVaGaming is a-MEI-zing, if I knew who this mysterious and adorable streamer was I’d bake her my special cake IYKWIM #Dvastream #single #cake

 

Angela Zeigler was, not for the last time in her life, escorted out of hospital by security for attempting to beat Hana Song to death with her own tablet. Despite being triaged by a flabbergasted nurse, Hana remained incredibly cheerful, touching up her make-up to take a sympathy selfie with the dressing that had been put on her forehead where she had a nasty gash. It turned out that technology really was hurting the youth of today.

But the energy wore off, the drunks sobered up, and the long wait began to take its toll. Prof Amari had still not returned. Two a.m. became three, and three turned into dawn and dawn to the busy bustle of the morning shift taking over from the night shift. Lena fell asleep at some point against Lúcio’s shoulder, and unbeknownst to her, Hana and Lúcio were relieved by Genji and Zarya, who despite her huge frame was incredibly gentle in transferring the sleeping Lena to her lap. Lena wasn’t to know that she’d managed to gather around herself a group of good friends, drawn to her by her infectious enthusiasm, cheery character and motor mouth.

“Uh, Miss?” A nurse cleared her throat and Lena shot up, disoriented, almost clouting Zarya on the chin.

“The cavalry’s ‘ere.” She muttered, scanning her surroundings and rubbing her eyes. “Eh, sorry?”

“Your friend has come out of her operation. The staff in Recovery are happy for you to see her for a few minutes.”

Her fatigue vanished. Lena jumped to her feet, hastily rearranging her toga beneath the oversized hoodie Zarya had brought to keep her warm and halfway decent. She followed the nurse into a quiet ward full of beeping monitors and patients in bays behind curtains. What would she say to Fareeha when she saw her? That she was sorry? Some apology that was.

Whatever she had to say to Fareeha turned out to be completely irrelevant, because the person in the curtained bay was not Fareeha at all. A tall, pale girl sat up in bed, one arm heavily bandaged, a drip running into a cannula in the back of her other hand. Long black hair tangled on the pillow below her head. Her eyes were open but glazed, an incredible bruise spread across her forehead and temple.

Amélie looked at her, confused.

“I’ll give you two some time.” The nurse said, evidently thinking she was being helpful, and pulled the curtain closed to leave Lena alone with Amélie.

The silence stretched like taffy between them. If she’d been tongue-tied about what to say to Fareeha, Lena would have liked a fortnight and word processing software to figure out what on earth she should talk to Amélie about.

“You broke my door.” Amélie said at last, staring into the middle distance. In her morphine-addled haze, her French accent was thick and syrupy, difficult to understand.

“Well, your window was already broken. I was just making sure everything was consistent in its broken-ness.”

Amélie chuckled, which made her heart-rate monitor go crazy. She clutched at her chest in regret. Lena was no medical student, but she’d sat through her GCSE Biology, and she knew there was something off about the trace of Amélie’s ECG.

“Did the bone hit your chest as well? Why’s your heart beating all weird?”

Amélie tapped her chest absentmindedly. “My pulmonary valve is leaking. It has been for some time. This is not unexpected.”

“Why?”

Amélie looked vaguely in Lena’s direction, muttering in French before translating herself. “This is a common complication with total surgical repair of _Tétralogie de Fallot_. The pulmonary valve often leaks some years after the surgery. It is causing problems pumping blood to my lungs to be oxygenated.”

She fluttered her fingertips at Lena, who saw that the tips and the nailbeds were faintly blue-tinged.

“I was born blue, you know.” Amélie said suddenly, speaking to her drip stand. “My heart was very malformed, unable to pump oxygenated blood around my body. Without the oxygen, the blood appears blue when close to the skin.”

“That’s… kinda freaky, actually.”

“I find this sort of thing interesting. I think I want to go to medical school. What do you think, Gérard?”

Amélie looked around her cubicle, searching for somebody who was not there. She finally focused on Lena, squinting, unsure of what to make of her. She felt around on her bedside table and put on a pair of browline glasses. For the first time since Lena had entered she seemed to realise who she was.

“You.”

“Me, love. I’m sure I’m not your first choice, but here I am.”

Something like panic briefly flashed in Amélie’s eyes. The line that traced her heart rate did a little wiggle. “The gesture is appreciated, but I am fine. Please go home.”

“I would, but my actual friend is still in surgery.”

“Fareeha.”

“Are you properly stalking us?”

“Non. Angela talked about her once.”

_Yeh, she would_ , Lena thought. The revelation that Angela had fancied Fareeha for a whole month was still fresh and slightly amusing.

“You were watching, when the bone arrow hit.” Lena stated. “You fell right next to the window. You gettin’ an eyeful?”

Amélie considered this carefully, still fuzzy from her anaesthetic. “I find you interesting.”

“Interesting? Hah, go on, I’m ‘interested’ to hear your excuse.” Lena plonked herself down on a stool. She figured that she had time to kill while Fareeha was still in surgery, and when she came out she’d come into this recovery area anyway. So she might as well try and find out just who Amélie was.

“Your door is never locked. People come in and out. Many friends. Sometimes they borrow your things. Sometimes lots of you squeeze into one room at once. And sometimes just you and the other girl – Fareeha.” Amélie stared hard at Lena, who realised that her eyes were a very disconcerting shade of amber. “You leave the blinds open on purpose.”

“Wha- no! Of course not!”

“It was not a question. You do. Sometimes you look over to my room smugly, like you have won a great victory. I don’t understand it. But it _is_ interesting.”

Lena cursed the blood rushing to her cheeks. Sure, she’d left the curtains open, and yes, she’d been hoping that the annoying, snooty French girl who’d been rude to her saw. Now she was face-to-face with her, though, she realised this had been a stupid idea.

“Yeh, well, not being a rude little missus has its rewards – people actually like me enough to sleep with me.”

Amélie raised an elegant eyebrow, then winced as the marvellous bruise covering her forehead was disturbed. “I do not recall seeing much sleep, chérie.”

“Would you ‘ave preferred I say ‘shagging’?”

“Tch. Such a vulgar term.”

Silence settled. Lena tried not to look at Amélie, who was trying not to look at Lena. This resulted in them both ending up staring at the same heart monitor. Its rhythmic beeps were comforting and constant in this awkward situation.

“Why were you watching? Why am I interesting?” Lena asked after a long time.

Amélie sighed and gave a Gallic shrug. She appeared to mull the question over for a while, but whether because she had not considered the reason or she was deciding how much of the truth to tell, Lena didn’t know. Lena watched her out of the corner of her eye and saw, as if a veil had been lifted, a sudden change in her face. She couldn’t quantify exactly what it was. No great emotion scrunched her brow or pulled at the corners of her lips, but nevertheless something had changed. Amélie looked older, colder, more sharply defined. White knuckles and blue fingertips clenched her blankets. She could have been replaced by an entirely different woman - if that wasn’t a crazy thought.

“You are interesting because you trust. You trust that when they borrow your things, they will return them. You trust that when you invite them into your personal space that they will not abuse it. And you trust the girl you invite into your bed… you trust that she will not take advantage of your vulnerability.”

“So?” Lena said defensively, “What’s wrong with being trusting?”

“Such a sweet, foolish girl.” Amélie chuckled. Her eyes pierced Lena, the amber bleached an inhuman yellow in the harsh hospital lighting. A shiver danced up Lena’s spine like a scuttling spider. “You are trusting because you have never been betrayed. I watch because I cannot wait to see what happens when you are.”

Then a loud buzz shocked Lena so much that she nearly fell off her stool. Amélie had pressed the nurse call buzzer by her bed, summoning dishevelled nursing student clutching armfuls of suction tubing.

“Hello? Are you all right, Miss Lacroix?”

“I feel faint. I think I need to rest.”

“Let me check your obs. Miss, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave for a while.”

Lena left when asked, unaware of why her hands were shaking or what the uncomfortable, itchy feeling beneath her skin was. Back in the waiting room, Zarya had fallen asleep over seven chairs, and Genji was trying desperately to read through a book called ‘ _Fundamentals of Project Management_ ’. Judging by the way he kept making disgusted noises and smacking it against his forehead, it wasn’t the edge-of-your-seat romp through the thrilling basics of Project Management that the title promised.

“How is she?” Genji asked when he spotted Lena. “God, you look awful, like somebody just walked over your grave.”

“It wasn’t Fareeha. They thought Amélie was my friend.”

“Amélie?”

“The girl in the room opposite who got hit.”

“Oh, yeh! I think Angie’s mentioned her. Grumpy continental sort?”

That was putting it mildly, Lena thought, but held her tongue. She didn’t really feel like explaining the whole Amélie situation to Genji and Zarya, as much as she liked them. What she really wanted was to be sat in her room with Lúcio and Fareeha, watching Netflix and munching their way through pizza. At the thought that Fareeha might be permanently out of that picture, Lena’s heart felt like somebody had squeezed it hard in a cold, clammy fist.

She waited in the hospital through her shift at the Watchpoint, though it was the weekend so she didn’t have any lectures to attend. She was sure Hana would cover for her somehow. People kept bringing her cups of awful vending machine coffee and insisting she eat something.

“Ana!” Lena shot to her feet, embarrassed at this outburst but pleased to see Professor Amari. She had changed into scrubs and was tugging off a scrub cap, letting her grey braid fall loose onto her shoulder. She looked, if it was possible, even more exhausted than Lena felt.

“Miss Oxton – Lena, if I may.”

“Is she- is she okay?”

“Time will tell. Certainly she will walk and talk. Though it’s unlikely she’ll be doing any more Athletics for a time.”

“Oh thank god!” And then Lena had thrown her arms around Ana, and Ana was gingerly patting her on the back. She smelled like surgery, and Lena dimly registered that when she had run off hours ago, it was to barge into her own daughter’s surgery all guns blazing.

“There, there. Fareeha will be all right. You must be good friends, to be so upset.”

“Yeh. Yeh, we are. Fareeha’s my… my best friend here at Overwatch.”

She could have sworn Ana hugged her a little tighter.

“Lena, I have to ask another favour of you. Fareeha has explained what happened, and Mako and Jamison are in police custody, but the police would like to take a statement from you as well.”

“Of course.”

Lena opened the still-stinging wound of what had happened last night for two haggard police officers in a small side room of the hospital, and afterwards was told firmly by Professor Amari to go home and sleep, or she would tell Professor Winston to set her extra reading next week. Hana and her awful pink car were nowhere to be seen, but Zarya manhandled (womanhandled?) her onto a short bus back to the university.

“I don’t think I can sleep in here.” At the threshold to her room, Lena had stopped dead. The remnants of police-keep out tape were coiled on the floor. The shattered window glass had been cleaned up and the window temporarily boarded up with chipboard, but everything else was just as it had been last night: the messy bed, the jumble of clothes on her desk chair, the posters of fighter planes on her walls. It all suddenly felt childish to her.

“No worries, amiga.” Lúcio emerged, yawning, from his room. “Take mine.”

“Thanks, Lúcio.”

“Don’t mention it. I’ll come get you if anything changes.”

Lena shucked off the toga but kept Zarya’s huge hoodie and her girl boxers on and burrowed under Lúcio’s frog-themed bedcovers. They were still warm from when he’d slept there, and smelled like jasmine. Soon she was asleep, where she dreamed of endless curtained hospital cubicles. She opened each one expecting to find Fareeha waiting for her. Fareeha was never there. Instead, Amélie sat in bed, connected to the monitors and drips by tubes and wires. Uncomfortably, Lena thought she looked much like a patient, yellow-eyed spider in the centre of a dreadful web.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next update will probably be next Friday because I'm about to get super busy covering my colleague's holiday shifts at work. Real Life is Hard.


	8. Just in Case

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the lateness of this chapter - I've decided at the last minute to do a bonkers thing and apply to the University of Oxford to study English, and the deadline is literally the week after next and I have eight hundred billion fifty-two thousand three hundred and seven things to do for it. This is a short chapter, and tomorrow I will also publish the 'intermission' chapter - it doesn't have much bearing on the plot but should hopefully be amusing.  
> Competition for the easter egg is still open! And I'm working on violetnovice's reward fic for the Fareeha's tattoo competition.  
> And here's the beginning of your Pharmercy, for those waiting for it. You'll have to wait a while longer for your Widowtracer. I am not a kind writer.

“That’s it. A few more steps, Fareeha.”

“I’m trying.” She clenched the bars either side with sweaty, callused palms. The pain was undeniable, all-encompassing, absolute. Fareeha could have dealt with that pain, it was nothing new to her. But the doubt in her own body’s competence was what was destroying her.

“You’re doing really well.”

Her hand slipped and she toppled to the padded floor. “No I’m not! Just – just go away, Angela, why do you even insist on being here?”

“Depends. If you were my tutor, I’d say that I was doing a case study on mobility recovery post spinal fracture stabilisation. But it’s actually because we’re all tired of tripping over your crutches. Oh, and having Professor Amari constantly making surprise visit to your house is ‘ruining the good-vibes party atmosphere’, according to Lúcio.”

“Good to know you’re doing your civic duty.” Fareeha pulled herself up with her arms alone, her expression stormy. “If you don’t want to be here, you can go. It’s not like I’m making any progress anyway.”

“Not making pro- _gut gott,_ Fareeha, have you read any of the literature on spinal fracture recovery?”

“No.”

“Fareeha, yours was bad. I saw the X-rays – don’t ask me how I got them – and you could have been paralysed. It’s only been a month and you’re halfway to walking unassisted. Don’t go so hard on yourself.”

“It’s not good enough.” Fareeha turned and started walking between the bars again, hands hovering above them just in case. She hated that just in case. She was strong. She was young. She shouldn’t have to think about just in cases.

It wasn’t that she’d forgotten how to walk, or that she couldn’t feel her feet or anything like that. She sometimes got pins and needles down her legs if she sat in the wrong position, but that didn’t bother her much. Everything just seemed so slow, so unnatural. How had she been coordinating her muscles to do this without even thinking about it for years? It just took so much damn effort!

She finished the walk to the end of the bar track and turned around to go again.

“You should rest.”

“I rested in hospital for weeks. The time to rest is over.”

“You’ll hurt yourself more if you push too far to fast.”

“You sound like that stupid physiotherapist.”

“Then maybe he had a point. Fareeha, I know you want to recover quicker, but is it really worth setting yourself back by weeks just to spite me?”

It wasn’t, and Fareeha knew it, but it was a bitter pill to swallow. She reluctantly maneuvered herself down onto a nearby stool, clutching her back and wincing. She pre-empted Angela’s disapproving remark with a volcanic glare in the direction of the annoying medical student.

Angela sat too, and offered Fareeha a chilled bottle of water. She gladly gulped it down. They were by no means the only two in the campus gym, but they were alone in the special rehabilitation suite, designed for those with sports injuries and containing dedicated physiotherapy equipment. Fareeha gazed longingly out of the window to the track, where the Athletics Association were doing Hanzo’s ‘death or victory’ circuit training. She could see Lena struggling with press-ups and Zarya’s shock of pink hair bobbing up and down as she did a boxer’s skip.

“You miss it?”

“I wasn’t very good at the high jump.” Fareeha said, shuddering at the sight of that bar and mat. “But I like the people and being in a team.”

To her surprise, Angela placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. It was nice. New. Fareeha struggled to remember somebody just resting their hand there, touching her in solidarity, lingering, warm and calming. She knew her father had been military too, but he had died in the war when she was very young. Ana was never very affectionate, their relationship strained. Lena – well, Lena was always zipping about, always quick in, quick out, a cheeky bum-slap, arms around your neck for a second, a high-five or fist-bump. Lena wasn’t a calming hand on the shoulder. Lúcio would thump you on the back several times and offer a high-five, and McCree’s idea of a friendly gesture was to offer you a puff of his joint.

Quite unsure of why she did it, Fareeha moved her own hand to touch Angela’s. It was innocent. A gesture of understanding, thanks, comradeship. But it still had that uncertain newness to it, like a fresh coat of gleaming white paint on a seaside cottage.

“H – how is Lena getting on?” Angela asked suddenly, withdrawing her hand as though she had committed some great sin.

“Lena? Fine, I suppose. She’s spread thinly, with her job, her course, athletics. She keeps saying she’ll slow down and sort things out when the Christmas holidays start, but Lúcio told me that Hana told him Lena’s booked solid shifts at Watchpoint all through the break. And we’ve got this big project essay to do for our course…”

“Sounds like she doesn’t have much time for – ah, for hanging out.”

Angela had been on the verge of saying ‘for you’, but felt it would be very rude to imply that Lena was not giving Fareeha the attention she deserved. She wasn’t even sure what the two of them were these days: flatmates, friends, girlfriends, friends-with-benefits… but Angela was not going to do anything to change whatever was going on.

“No. No, she doesn’t.” Fareeha slumped, her gaze pensive as she looked out on to the track. “I think she’s avoiding me. After the hospital.”

Angela’s heart thudded loudly in her chest. “What?”

“Oh – did you not know? I had a bit of a… well, it’s not my place to…”

Manners be damned, Angela wanted to hear this. “I didn’t know something had gone on at the hospital. Is Lena okay?”

“She’s fine, she just… we’re friends, aren’t we, Angela?”

“Of course.”

“Can I trust you to keep it to yourself, if I tell you? You’re not a gossip, are you?”

“If you ask, I will be your confidante.”

Fareeha bit her lip, trying to decide, and in the end blurted out. “I had a sort of breakdown when she visited me.”

 

Everything was sort of far away those first few hours after the surgery. Her limbs felt heavy, brain slow, fuzzy with the morphine. Nurses came and went to check up on her, some doctors, a physiotherapist, but she’d forgotten them five minutes after they left her bedside.

Fareeha was constantly told that she was young and fit and recovering quickly. They did tests with electrodes on her feet and hands and told her she was a-okay to get up and have a go at walking as long as she wore the back brace she’d been given.

But Fareeha did not want to have a go at walking.

She felt betrayed by her body and mind. All the motivational posters on her walls, the training regimen she put herself through every day of her teenage years with one goal in mind – worthless. Her future was ruined. The depression bit deep and held her in its torpid hands, dragging her down into her mattress.

She could never join the army with this kind of injury, no matter how well she recovered. It would always be a scar on her skin and a blemish on her record, kept in her notes and under her name on the computerised system at the hospital. She was marked. Marked as undesirable, inadequate, incompatible.

“But this is good news!” Her mother tried to convince her. “Fareeha, you know there is more to life than the army. Just because it was the path I took does not mean it has to be yours. Have you ever considered anything else? There are so many careers and vocations.”

Fareeha had been playing with Desert Storm Action-Man since she had the presence of mind to realise that Barbie was not going to be a successful sniper in those pink heels. She’d been a cadet at school, begged and begged her mother to let her apply for the Defence Academy at sixteen, filled out application forms for years that she’d never sent in. She wanted to be a soldier. That was her path, she knew it deep in her bones. And now, who was she without the certainty that she would be smiling in a photograph in her dress uniform?

In the following days she was moved to an orthopaedic ward and put on a program to try and get her moving and remembering how to walk again. Despite how young and healthy and fit she apparently was, the physiotherapists were mystified at how slow her progress had been. They sent her for further tests to check if there was more damage than they’d thought. They had called the on-call psychiatrist to talk to her about why she was feeling low. Then, they had decided that what she needed was to see a few friendly faces, and Lena had arrived on the ward.

The first thing she had done was burst into tears, apologise a hundred times, and run away to the toilets for twenty minutes to collect herself.

“Ready now?” Fareeha had asked. In retrospect, her tone had been unkind. She wasn’t feeling much like seeing Lena, with her totally unscathed body. Lena was acting like the guilt she felt over needing to be saved by Fareeha was some terrible burden. What an awful thing that must be, to feel the tickle of guilt, an emotional wound. And Fareeha couldn’t contain herself from saying so.

“You have no idea how I feel. How this is. My whole life will change now, and you’re squirming with guilt and acting like it’s the worst feeling ever. Well, let me tell you, the worst feeling ever is – it’s how I feel right now.”

“I didn’t mean – Fareeha, I’d never want to come across like I’ve got the worse end of the stick –”

“Well you are!” Fareeha raged at her, raising her voice to make up for how small and useless she felt in her hospital bed. “You’re talking about how worried you were, and how awful you feel, but your life isn’t going to change one bit! I did the right thing, I did the just thing, and now I’m being punished for it! How unfair is that? What’s the point of being good and lawful and trying to help your friends when they’re just going to whine like spoiled children at you!”

Fareeha knew she had gone too far. Lena’s face sank, her mouth hanging open while her lip quivered. She looked very young suddenly, chubby-cheeked and wide-eyed. She was looking at Fareeha like she was experiencing some kind of déjà vu. Lena had seen two people get the same hard, loss-of-innocence look recently.

“I didn’t mean to whine.” She said quietly. Nothing like the chirpy Lena Fareeha knew. Suddenly Fareeha noticed that her normally wild and gelled hair was lank and greasy, her clothes rumpled, her eyes no longer sparkling. The goodness in Fareeha whispered that though Lena wasn’t feeling the same life-changing physical pain she was, she was still entitled to feel bad.

But it was, after all, just a whisper.

“I’m just so worried. The nurses said you’re hardly eating. That you don’t want to walk. You all right, love?”

The brave attempt at her usual bluster fell flat.

“So they’ve sent you in to report on poor Fareeha, the difficult patient.”

“No! Nothing like that! They just thought you might wanna see a friendly face – not that my old mug is much comfort, I bet.”

“I just want to be left alone.”

Lena bit her lip, not meeting Fareeha’s eyes. Obviously she’d been told not to leave Fareeha alone at all costs.

“Everybody says hi. Well, except Hanzo, who says he expects you back at training the week after next at the latest.”

This was the wrong thing to say. Fareeha gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. Training. She saw in her mind’s eye the Omnica Sports Arena, the sun-drenched track and the tall stands. The Athletics association meeting there, working together, helping each other, pushing their bodies to be more perfect. The fervent excitement to get better. Fans in the stands – in this vision, Fareeha saw Angela and Mei from the BakeSoc waving flags, Lúcio blasting out victory music from an old-fashioned boombox while Hana tired out her thumbs on a Gameboy. McCree smoked in the corner checking his watch grumpily. Zarya thumped her on the back, saying something like ‘They all come to watch you jump high, da? We make them proud’.

The fantasy cracked and crumbled at the edges. There was Lena and Genji, sprinting down the track like blurs. They were coming straight towards her. She was standing in the middle of the track. There was no way they couldn’t have seen her, but they kept running, sprinting full pelt towards her. They were going to collide with her, but Fareeha was helpless, bedbound, unable to move out of their way. Zarya was speaking to her again, saying ‘They’ve got to break record. You’ll only get in way’. Fareeha looked down in terror and saw that she was strapped into a wheelchair. She began to desperately undo buckles, trying to get herself out, take the breaks off, anything, but it was useless.

“Miss Amari! Miss Amari!”

Fareeha was suddenly aware that she was screaming. She was in the hospital, with nurses around her and Lena standing stupidly in the corner.

“I’m fine.” She croaked. Her whole body shuddering betrayed her slightly but she insisted and insisted until they left her alone, threatening to page the on-call psychiatrist again. Fareeha breathed heavily, unable to shake the trapped feeling of the strange hallucination. She turned down the dial on her morphine pump. A bit of pain was worth not having that happen again.

“Fareeha.” Lena muttered. Her face was completely white. She was afraid. Fareeha saw the marks of dug-in fingernails on her arm and realised that Lena had tried to come and help her when she screamed. Those straps she had been trying to tear off had been Lena’s arms.

“Go. Go on. Please, I meant it when I said leave me alone. I’m struggling right now, Lena. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I can’t just –”

“You can and you will. Give me some time. Please. I have to work through… some things.”

“Okay. I’m here if you need. Whenever you need, love.”

Fareeha nodded and Lena left, nursing the deep welts in her arm. When she was sure that her housemate was truly gone, Fareeha picked up her phone and opened messenger, finding the name of the only person who might know what she was going through.

 

**Fareeha Amari**

Can you come to the hospital? I think I need to talk to you.

 

**Genji Shimada**

Ive been waiting for u to ask. Give me half n hour

 

“So it was Genji you turned to?” Angela asked curiously. She’d listened raptly to Fareeha’s story, nodding and gesturing for her to continue in all the right places. “He wouldn’t be my first choice of kind listeners. This is the man who dyed his hair green for a bet that he couldn’t down a pint from inside his prosthetic leg – oh.”

Angela realised why Fareeha had wanted to talk specifically to Genji.

“Was it useful to talk to him?”

“Honestly, he’s still got a lot of unresolved stuff himself. He didn’t want to get into it, and I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I have a feeling it involved Hanzo.”

“It did. But it’s for him to say.”

“He gave me the number of one of the university counsellors, the one he goes to every week. Zenyatta.”

“The monk? I’ve seen him around. I thought he was part of the multi-faith team.”

“He is, but he’s also a student counsellor. Genji arranged to have him come talk to me at the hospital. I don’t know why exactly, but it helped. He’s a strange man, but talking to him at least made my mind up to try getting out of bed. And now four weeks later, here I am.”

“And have you converted? Are you one with the Iris? Shall I help you shave your head and fit your for your robes?”

Fareeha laughed. It was her first true laugh in weeks. It spilled out of her, deep chuckles that flowed around the rehab room and seemed to make the strip lighting just a bit warmer.

Angela lightly elbowed her, a soft teasing gesture. Fareeha took in the med student’s beaming smile, her bright blue eyes, the softness of her skin. She decided that Angela was not like Lena. It was noticeable in the way she spoke and moved, some spider sense telling Fareeha that her kindness and compassion were not borne of naïveté, but experience. Angela was fighting against the shadow of tragedy too. In that moment, they saw each other as comrades in this ongoing battle.

“I don’t know about the head-shaving, but I could do with something to eat.” Fareeha gestured to her sweaty body in a tank-top and trackie bottoms and her rumbling stomach.

“You are literally talking to the president of the BakeSoc. Of course I came prepared.”

From her handbag Angela extracted a tupperware box lined with foil and filled with gooey white chocolate chip cookies, still slightly warm from the oven.

“Baked them this morning. I figured you might want a snack.”

Fareeha took one, savouring the vanilla and cinnamon smell wafting up from it. She’d lost all excitement for food over the last month, but suddenly she was famished. She stuffed the cookie in her mouth and gave a loud moan of pleasure as the doughy base melted in her mouth and released a nugget of molten white chocolate onto her tongue.

She’d eaten three before she started to feel a bit sugar-sick. As if reading her mind, Angela produced a small carton of milk in a coolbag.

“Milk and cookies? Do I have naptime and them arts and crafts after this?”

“Behold the mighty power of baked goods.” Angela winked. A warmth unrelated to the chocolate settled in Fareeha’s stomach. For the first time since the incident, she felt normal.


	9. Intermission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short, comedy-based intermission to mark roughly halfway through this story. Please enjoy - the next chapter should be coming next weekend.

**D.Va**

(@DVaGaming)

<attached image> selfie w/ me and my homeboy @luciomusic brainstorming collab at the Watchpoint @overwatchuniofficial #collab #music #secretproject #Lucio

 

**D.Va**

(@DVaGaming)

for those of you asking – tell barista Lena secret password ‘F*ck me up with coffee’ for the special drink ‘Pulse Bomb’ (1/2)

 

**D.Va**

(@DVaGaming)

We call it the Pulse Bomb b/c it’s the equivalent of a slab of exploded C4 to the heart it will get ur pulse hella high #seriouslyitwillkillyou #dontdrinkifyourepregnant (2/2)

 

**Christian Bayless**

(@bayboi92)

@DVaGaming 2 things: 1)is this confirmation u attend Overwatch uni and 2)have u realised ur twitter handle has ‘vag’ in it

 

**D.Va**

(@DVaGaming)

@bayboi92 1)cmon like itd be that easy im a woman of mystery and 2)yeh I know its ur mums

 

**Things Prof Amari says**

(@ninjaeyepatchaccountant)

‘Mr Bayless @bayboi92 why r u starin at ur crotch in my lecture’ ‘D.Va @DVaGaming is insulting my mums vagina prof’ (1/2)

 

**Things Prof Amari says**

(@ninjaeyepatchaccountant)

‘Tell this D.Va that your mums vagina is not the subject of this lecture and put your phone away’ #whatalegend #TraumAmari (2/2)

 

 

* * *

 

 

**The Overwatch Gazette**

Serious student journalism since 1962

 

**INTERNATIONAL GAMING SUPERSTAR D.VA: OVERWATCH STUDENT?**

By Olympia Shaw

 

Scandal in the Student Union yesterday as celebrated streamer D.Va posted a selfie from Overwatch University’s very own Watchpoint coffee shop.

The candid selfie showed D.Va with first-year Sound Engineering student Lúcio Correia de Santos sharing drinks and alluding to a collaborative ‘secret project’ in the Watchpoint. Correia de Santos is well-known in his own right as part of a guerrilla underground revolutionary music scene in Rio de Janiero, fighting the redevelopment of the favelas by the Vishkar Corporation.

What could famously airheaded and foulmouthed corporate sell-out D.Va, who has stated in interviews that her famous consumption of Mountain Dew and Doritos during gaming streams is part of a sponsorship deal, bring to the table with Lúcio? Speculation at this point is useless, but D.Va’s tweets (printed below) seem to show she has insider knowledge of special orders at the Watchpoint. Does this imply that D.Va is an Overwatch student? We spoke to several students.

“Oh, yeh, of course. I’ve seen her round loads.” Says second-year Geography student Genevieve Eric. Gen Eric goes on further to detail several instances of seeing D.Va in the library. “She likes twelfth-century Abyssinian epic poetry and monster trucks.”

Campus librarian Mark dePage denied our Freedom of Information request to find out records of who has signed out books on these subjects. More on this as we take this matter to court.

The Gazette contacted D.Va’s media team for a quote about these tweets. They said: “D.Va is a very popular streamer who would rather people respect her privacy. We can confirm she visited Overwatch University yesterday for an informal meeting with Lúcio. We would also like to put on the record that D.Va has never met, nor slept with Mrs Deborah Bayliss as was insinuated in several tweets. She continues to be committed to making exciting and fresh content for her fans. Drink Mountain Dew!”

We at the Gazette remain unconvinced by this. We are instigating D.Va Watch, and offering a £20 reward for anybody who can snap a picture of this elusive streamer on the Overwatch campus or provide us with reliable information as to her location. If D.Va is truly a fellow student, we want to know!

 

* * *

 

 

From: jack.morrisson@overwatch.ac.uk

To: whole student body mailing list (12,833 recipients)

Cc: healthcentre@overwatch.ac.uk

 

Subject: HEALTH WARNING

 

Dear Overwatch students,

 

This should go without saying but apparently as Student Union Financial Manager any businesses on campus fall under my remit, I have to tell you.

Following a series of recent twitters by somebody called Diva, we have been under investigation by the FDA for a drink produced in the Watchpoint coffee shop called a ‘Pulse Bomb’. This is an unofficial menu item and therefore has not been thoroughly tested by the FDA to ensure it is acceptable to serve to paying customers.

The FDA investigation has concluded that a ‘Pulse Bomb’ falls just below the Recommended Daily Allowance for kcal, sugar and saturated fats. It could unfortunately find nothing physically wrong or toxic with the drink, and has concluded that if requested it can be served.

Thus I have the pleasurable task of reminding the student body to use their common sense in purchasing this drink. Students with heart problems, epilepsy, or those who could be pregnant should avoid the ‘Pulse Bomb’ due to its high caffeine content.

Seven students have already been seen at the campus Health Centre suffering palpitations and hallucinations after consuming two ‘Pulse Bombs’ in quick succession before examinations.

Use your brains. You’re university students, not toddlers.

 

Kind Regards,

Jack Morrisson BSc (Hons) MSc DipHE

Student Union Financial Officer

Student Union Management Offices, 2nd Floor, Atlas Building, Overwatch University

 

* * *

 

 

From: reinhardt.wilhelm@overwatch.ac.uk

To: jack.morrison@overwatch.ac.uk, ana.amari@overwatch.ac.uk

Cc: humanresources@overwatch.ac.uk

 

Subject: Mandatory social media and email sensitivity training

  

* * *

 

 

Jack didn’t need to read the rest, but he could hear Gabriel cackling to himself in the next office. He banged his fist on the wall to get the old witch to shut up. His intra-office messenger app immediately pinged.

 

**Gabriel Reyes** <Gabriel.reyes@overwatch.ac.uk>

If you like I can give you some personal sensitivity training tonight Jack

 

Jack checked he didn’t have any students around and thumped the wall again in reply. This was their sign for ‘yes’.


	10. Farther and Farther Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally broke my writer's block on this fic and managed to write a tonne, so you guys get a chapter! This one is quite short and very Amelie-focused, but necessary to set some things up. There's something of a time-skip between the end of October and the start of December, because everybody knows that nothing ever happens in November (or, this fic is already 40k long and I haven't even gotten 1/3 of the way through the university year yet, so Argo needs a kick up the arse).  
> Content warning for mentions of murder and depression.  
> Just saying, this would be a good chapter to look very closely at if you're trying to guess the big easter egg that is still up for grabs for the competition... >_>?

Amélie paced her room, a steady stream of vicious curses rolling from her tongue. Why? Why now, just as she’d thought she might be able to come home for the Christmas holidays? It was as if, even after everything she’d been through, the world still had punches to throw her way.

“Ami? Are you still there?” Came her father’s voice across the video call.

“Yes, papa.”

“Ami, please don’t be too upset. It’s awful of them, but it is the anniversary of his – of the incident. You know the local paper doesn’t have anything half-interesting to print.”

“But you said people are talking about it again.”

“They are. Not like during the trial, but they’ve been reminded. Which is why I think it’s best for you to stay in England until it all blows over again.”

Amélie swore. “But I don’t want to stay here! My room is tiny, I have no friends, nothing to do except be pestered by that infernal baking woman and her cabal! I want to be home, with mama and you and Marc and Madéline… with the Christmas tree in the parlour, and that stupid paper angel me and Gérard made when we were five on top!”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Her father crooned, reaching towards the camera as if he could wipe away her tears. “You know I want that more than anything. But it’s just not safe. We’ve only just finished getting the last batch of graffiti off, and somebody smashed the conservatory windows just yesterday.”

“But if nobody knew…”

“Somebody would find out. Reporters would check flight details to see if you flew home, or train tickets. They’re just out to make money and raise circulation. I don’t want to see you like last time. We nearly lost you, Ami.”

Amélie collapsed into her desk chair, tears streaming down her face. She wanted to go home. She wanted to curl up by the fire in the parlour, with the soapy smell of the needles of the Christmas tree tickling her nose while she read a book and enjoyed a glass of wine. She wanted to see her parents, to hold them close and let her broad-chested father carry her up to her bedroom when her legs gave way from sadness and exhaustion.

“You look sad, Ami.”

“I just need to be home. I feel so cold, so lost. Papa, I can’t do this.”

“It’s only for a few years, until the shadow of the trial passes and I can move my practice away from Annecy when my contract expires. Should I call Thadeas? You’re always so much happier after you talk things out with him.”

“I don’t want to waste his time.”

“He dotes upon you, Ami, it will not be time wasted. I will call him, set up a video conference. It will be nice to know he’s taking care of you.”

Amélie nodded in agreement. It had been several weeks since she’d contacted Dr. Griffe and her doubts and tensions were mounting again. She should by all accounts have already arranged to speak with him herself. She didn’t know why she hadn’t – perhaps she had been too distracted with excitement at the thought of the Christmas that wasn’t coming after all.

“Okay, papa.”

“I must go, my next patient is due soon. All my love, darling.”

The call clicked off, leaving Amélie once again alone in the silence. She idly typed in the name of the local paper, finding its online site. The article was front page news. She knew she shouldn’t read it – it would only make her feel worse – but still she continued.

 

_MEMORIAL HELD AT GRAVE OF LOCAL BOY ON ANNIVERSARY OF MURDER_

_By Léo Carvois_

_Over fifty local Annecy residents attended a candlelit memorial in honour of local boy Gérard Lacroix, who was found murdered in his girlfriend’s bed on this date last year._

_Mourners spoke about his enthusiasm, his local volunteering work and his promising future. Gérard’s parents, Marc and Madéline Lacroix, attended but were too overcome to speak. Afterwards they thanked all who attended and reiterated their promise to seek justice for their murdered son._

_The murder of Gérard Lacroix (17) came as a great shock to the local community last year. He was discovered strangled to death in girlfriend Amélie’s(17) bed. Gérard and Amélie share a surname on account of their fathers being the unrelated but adopted sons of famous cardiothoracic surgeon Jacques Lacroix, and their families had always been close._

_After a lengthy trial, a jury concluded that Amélie, who had suffered since birth from a rare heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot and had multiple surgeries to attempt to repair the malformed structures, could not have been strong enough to strangle Gérard. Local psychiatrist and pioneer of advanced hypnotherapy techniques, Dr. Thadeas Griffe, provided testimony to Amélie’s frailty. He stated she had been seeing him recently due to a recurrence of debilitating symptoms that had induced depression and ensured that she had neither the physical nor mental strength to attack her boyfriend._

_Multiple witnesses spoke to Amélie and Gérard’s close and loving relationship. The two had been dating since the age of fourteen and were reported to be planning to get engaged after graduating from their Lycée._

_Evidence of two similar murders in the local area from two and four years previously was presented to the court. Both other murders involved the strangling of a boyfriend in his girlfriend’s bed, but the girlfriends in question – Catherine Dubois and Rachel Aubert – never stood trial. Dubois disappeared shortly after the murder and has never been found. Aubert hung herself in her prison cell whilst awaiting questioning._

_After Amélie was cleared of the charge of murder, an investigation was opened into the possibility of a serial killer setting young girls up for their boyfriends murders. They have no new leads as of publishing. The Annecy community remains angry for their loss of their promising young men, and many still place blame upon Amélie despite the not guilty verdict. Neither Amélie nor her parents attended Gérard’s memorial. It is unknown whether Amélie Lacroix still lives in the Annecy area._

_What is known is that the death of Gérard Lacroix is still raw to the community. Neighbours of the Lacroix household reported an increase in vandalism to the property, including the spraying of graffiti saying ‘Guilty as the blood on her hands’ and ‘Widow of your own making’._

_Notes of condolence, flowers or donations can be made to Marc and Madéline Lacroic, Gérard’s parents, at their listed address._

_Do you have any information regarding the police investigation for this murderer, dubbed by the public ‘The Black Widow Killer’? If so, please call the number below to anonymously report anything._

Amélie’s blood ran cold scanning the words. Could they have printed her name any more times? This article contained details of everything that had gone on, dredged up from the past. Already the read counter on the side of the page was climbing into quadruple figures. She knew how these things went viral. And now this talk of a serial killer… people always got interested when it might be a serial killer.

The problem was that the article was not inaccurate or defamatory, and she therefore had no legal basis to ask for it to be taken down. And, even if she did, the paper would likely just publish a second article making a huge deal about her wanting to ‘silence the free press’ or ‘supress the details of this gruesome murder’. It would be more trouble than it was worth.

Instead she closed the article. Her desktop picture stared at her, the same one as she kept in the frame and folded in her purse. She reached out and touched Gérard’s smiling face with her fingertip. He was so filled with life, so golden and glowing compared to her cold, blue fingers. She felt further away from his memory than ever before.

Suddenly the little room was suffocating, pressing in on her from all sides. The lights were off as usual, but the bright laptop screen and the picture upon it screamed accusations at her. Amélie took her coat from her cupboard and threw a thick woollen scarf around her neck. She left the house and walked without purpose down King’s Row. Something was fluttering in the very back of her mind, some fleeting thought she couldn’t identify. Yes, that was it. Why had she thought the picture was accusatory? It was a foolish notion, to imagine that she had anything to do with Gérard’s murder. But why did he have to look at her like that, like that gorgeous golden face was trying to remind her… remind her of something…

Amélie wandered across campus at a brisk pace. She couldn’t stay outside too long in the early December chill due to her circulatory problems. The bruised sky threatened rain. She hated the British climate. Snow she could deal with – snow was perfect and beautiful. Snow settled heavy across the fields and mountains and on rooftops, muffling the world under its shimmering white blanket. But rain? Rain just made everything damp and chilly. There was no beauty in rain to Amélie, but England seemed to have rain in abundance.

It was the first day after the Christmas holidays had begun. Most of the International Program students – the ‘InterPushers’ as they were called – had gone home yesterday to make the most of the long break in their own countries. Thinking of them made Amélie’s chest tight and uncomfortable. She wouldn’t be going home to see her family.

In fact, she thought, the quiet campus was much preferable to the normal hustle and bustle. Almost peaceful. She found warmth in the library, where she sat herself next to a radiator up on the third floor and read through a dog-eared physiology textbook. From her cosy nook she had a view out of the window to the sports stadium. A dedicated subgroup of sportspeople jogged around the track in tracksuit bottoms and thick jumpers – all except a brown-haired blur in tiny lycra shorts and a hoodie so comically huge that it was slipping off.

The textbook was left open at a diagram of the gallbladder. Amélie was content to watch the runners from her warm vantage point. The inappropriately dressed one was, of course, Lena Oxton. Amélie had covertly asked Angela and Mei about her last time she had been blackmailed to a BakeSoc event – the gingerbread and eggnog xmas social.

Amélie felt ashamed of the stab of jealousy that flashed through her. Lena Oxton was unbearably cheerful, adored by her friends, involved in all sorts of activities. She was fit and healthy, rosy-cheeked and alive with naïveté. All the things Amélie wished she still was. There were other people in her life who had these qualities, but for some reason she had focused all of her jealousy and hatred and loss on Lena Oxton, the girl who seemed to have it all.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Amélie checked it to find an email from Dr. Griffe, saying he had spoken to her father and would she like a video chat appointment tonight. She replied to the affirmative. At least she had that to look forward to. She always felt so much better after talking to Dr. Griffe.

She set the physiology textbook aside and took the next one from the top of her pile: _First Principles of Psychiatry, 4 th Edition_. She was quite fascinated by the study of the mind and its malignancies. Amélie accepted she had always been a ‘fragile’ girl, body and mind, and Dr. Griffe had always told her so as well.

Thadeas Griffe was one of her father’s closest friends, and had graduated medical school with him and Marc, Gérard’s father. The three of them had been inseparable, but Thadeas had decided at the last minute not to join Marc and Tristén in their surgical residency to train as a psychiatrist. When Amélie’s crippling phobia of spiders had caused her several cardiac episodes in her childhood, her father had turned to Dr. Griffe. When her pulmonary valve had begun to leak even after all the heart surgeries, she had gone back to Dr. Griffe. He had always been there for her, a listening ear, attentive, practical in his methods. Dr. Griffe’s research interests were into pharmaceutical-assisted hypnotherapy, using medications to relax the mind and enhance the effects of hypnotherapy. Amélie had been one of a few to benefit from his early trials.

She glanced back over at Lena, who was now doing hurdles. Dr. Griffe had been strangely evasive on the subject – Amélie had brought up her frustrations with the loud-mouthed British girl several times. He hadn’t told her to avoid Lena. Amélie wanted to be told to avoid her, because then it would be doctor’s orders and she could justify it.

She shrugged off some vague mental discomfort that was coming out of this train of thought and continued on with the chapter she was reading: _The Depressive Process and its solutions._


	11. Mother-Daughter Bonding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a wee bit late. I took time out to write a smutty one-shot (Discordant Symphony, if you want to check it out and can take a fair amount of apocalyptic dread and despair) then went on holiday.  
> This chapter is mainly to move the story on a wee bit, and because I wanted to explore the Ana/Fareeha relationship a bit more. Mum Ana is best Ana.  
> Nobody has correctly guessed the easter egg yet! This chapter has no mention of it at all. You'd be best looking in Amélie-heavy chapters for it.  
> Please enjoy this chapter! Also, since I'm fairly ahead of what I'm posting on here, I've committed to another fic. The first mega-chapter will be published on Halloween, because it's a supernatural/urban fantasy AU with necromancer!angela, shifter!fareeha, vampire!widowmaker and ghost!tracer. Pharmercy main pairing with Widowtracer and some others too. It's going to be awful and indulgent and I hope you'll love it :3

The solution to Fareeha Amari’s depressive process turned out to be a blonde, Swiss medical student and the baked goods she seemed able to produce indefinitely.

Every memory was accompanied by a taste. The milk and cookies in the physiotherapy room. Flaky custard tarts smuggled into the library. Condensed milk and coconut sweets in Fareeha’s room during an awful thunderstorm.

The first time she had walked without crutches to lectures and back, that had been buttery shortbread and a thermos of hot chocolate. Mulled wine and wonky gingerbread people at the BakeSoc social where they had sat, sides touching, on the sagging sofa in Angela’s flat.

Fareeha was headstrong, proud, resistant to change. But something about Angela’s insistence, her patience, her steadfast support (and constant nagging) had slowly changed her without her noticing. She wanted to get better. For herself, but for the smile on Angela’s face when she made a breakthrough or reached a milestone.

That was not to say she didn’t have her dark days, her low days. Days where she sat in her Spartan room and stared at the workout equipment she couldn’t use and the posters that told her to be better and try harder. On those days she cried ugly tears and threw her painkillers across the room and ended up sprawled on the itchy carpet after trying too hard to be what she had been when she had believed those posters.

It was the first day after the Christmas holidays had begun. Fareeha had nowhere to go home to – her father was far out of the picture, and Ana lived on campus anyway – so she was staying on campus. It was cold and frosty outside. This had not stopped Lena leaving quietly at the crack of dawn for Athletics training. They had still not spoken much beyond the small-talk of acquaintances and practical arrangements. Now that they were the only two in the house, the tension was starting to become unbearable.

 

Text from: Mum

Coffee? Want to catch up

 

Fareeha considered blowing her off and staying indoors. She was trying to work on her project essay anyway. It was a decent excuse. But when you had an ex-military sniper for a mother, you knew there was only so much running away from her. Ana would hunt her down eventually.

 

Text to: Mum

Sure now?

 

Text from: Mum

20 mins at Watchpoint, bring the nice teabags I gave you for your birthday please it’s the awful barista working today

 

text to: Mum

Hana is not awful

 

Text from: Mum

I just saw her squirt whipped cream onto a Dorito and eat it

 

Text to: Mum

Okay point taken I will bring teabags

 

Fareeha rummaged in her desk for the ornate ceramic pot in the shape of an elephant that Ana had given her for her birthday in October. They were some interesting blend from Malaysia. Though Fareeha did not share her mother’s taste for exotic tea she appreciated the heady, rich smell that wafted from the teabags in the pot.

Outside it was cold enough to warrant the hoodie and puffa gilet she forced herself into. Her progress down King’s Row was slower than it used to be, but Fareeha Amari walked and she walked well.

The Atlas building wasn’t as empty as she’d imagined it. Students still lounged on sofas and worked on laptops even though it was the holidays. The Watchpoint was toasty warm inside, probably due to the unnoticed steam leak from one of the coffee machines. The manager Mr. Lindholm was holed up in his office tinkering with something composed of many odd metallic parts, and the sole barista, Hana Song, was playing on her phone behind the counter.

“ _Eazizi_.” Ana rose from the table she sat at and embraced her daughter. Their hug was short and awkward, but not in a bad way. Ana and Fareeha were just beginning to reconnect after many years of busy lecturing schedules and teenaged angst. After all, when your mum punches a surgeon who won’t let her operate on her daughter’s spine for you, you can’t really stay mad at her.

Two steaming cups of water waited for the teabags. Ana sipped her tea appreciatively, savouring the flavour, but Fareeha let the smell and warmth waft up into her face. She thought idly that Angela would know exactly the sweet treat to go with this tea.

“You look well.”

“Me and my spine have called a temporary truce, yes.” Fareeha said.

“My spine and I, dear.”

Fareeha sighed. “Right, my spine and I.”

“And how is your project going? Professor Winston tells me you are writing your essay on propulsion cooling systems.”

“Slowly.” Fareeha admitted. “I’m interested in the topic, but most of the literature involves the cooling of giant jet engines. I’m looking into what would be required for a much smaller set of engines.”

Ana paused mid-sip, her greying eyebrows meeting at a furrow. The odd wiggly scar under her left eye crinkled as she fixed Fareeha with a knowing look.

“A much smaller set… Fareeha, does this have anything to do with Raptora?”

Caught. She blushed to the roots of her black hair and looked pointedly at the ceramic elephant on the table between them.

“Maybe.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! I thought you’d abandoned that silly thing years ago.”

“She wasn’t a silly thing, mum.”

“It does not do for fourteen-year-old girls to have superheroines in flying suits of armour as imaginary friends.”

“She wasn’t an imaginary – it was an idea, a character –”

“You drew that suit for years. I remember the comics you used to write ‘The Adventures of Raptora’. They were sweet. But Fareeha, they were comics. You can’t actually make a flying suit.”

“So you can join the army at sixteen and be one of the first woman snipers, then become a trauma surgeon at the age of forty, and do whatever amazing unprecedented things you want. But I can’t see if it’s possible within the context of my _aeronautical_ engineering degree to – don’t be too shocked here – make something fly?”

Ana pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Now don’t you take that sarcastic tone with me, Fareeha. May I remind you that you’re getting a world-class education for free? Don’t you dare waste it.”

“I didn’t want a degree. I wanted to join the army after school. But I came here instead because you insisted, and look where that got me.” Fareeha’s blood was beginning to boil hotter than the tea. “But now my back got broken I can’t ever join the army, so I suppose you got what you wanted anyway. You must be happy.”

The teacup clattered down on its saucer. Ana had clenched the handle too tightly, snapping it off and causing the cup to fall. Her aged face had gone slack, older and more tired than ever before.

“I am happy.” She whispered, fist curled into white knuckles, eyes blinking away tears. “Not that you were hurt. Fareeha, I would give everything up in a heartbeat if it meant I could keep you safe and happy. When I heard that you had broken your back, the thought of you injured, crying, broken… I couldn’t bear it. My worst fears were realised even though you hadn’t gone off to the army like you wanted.”

“What – what do you mean?”

“Do you not think the idea keeps me awake at night? That you’ll run off and sign up, that they’ll take you off to a warzone? Where I’ll be sat by the phone waiting to hear that you’ve been hurt, maimed, crippled, killed? The thought of seeing you off for the last time and getting nothing but a coffin draped in a flag in return? It terrifies me.”

Ana’s hands shook, gnarled fingers and prominent veins fluttering and twisting. She tried a few times to continue, but she was crying, a wet stain soaking the bottom of her eyepatch.

“There is no honour and justice in war. Not the kind I know you want. It’s not defending your country or bringing peace. It’s killing people, ending lives, destroying towns and cultures and livelihoods. I won’t let you go, I won’t let it change you like it changed me. I need you to stay as the bright-eyed little girl who dreams of flying, Fareeha. If I let them put a gun in your hand, I’d let them take away your soul.”

Fat tears made soft _plink plonk_ sounds as they landed in Ana’s tea. She wrenched off the eyepatch and tried to dab it dry on the lapel of her coat, but it was soaked. The scarred, burned, twisted socket with its empty hole stared out at Fareeha, a reminder of the true rewards of war.

“Mum.” Fareeha reached out and grabbed one of the shaking hands. “Mum, I’m so… I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“I’ve taken so many lives in war. I’ve lost so many patients on the operating table. You’re the only life I’ve created, Fareeha, and I can’t even be a proper mother to you. I’m the one who should be sorry. I’ve been so absent, so useless…”

“No, I’ve been fighting you every time you tried –”

“I missed your college graduation just to scrub in on a surgery –”

“I never listened when you tried to talk to me –”

“I’m the reason your father is dead.”

Fareeha’s next rushed admission screeched to a halt halfway out of her mouth. “I – what?”

“It’s my fault. You were living with grandma in Cairo, Yusuf and I went back out on our third tour in Afghanistan. I… I met a man. He was part of the German relief battalion come to aid us. I had an affair on the base, and Yusuf found out. He stormed out on the first patrol he could sign up for in anger, and his vehicle was destroyed by insurgents in a roadside bombing. He never came back. All because of me.”

The defence mechanism in Fareeha’s brain engaged like a sledgehammer to the face. She completely skipped past what she had been told, desperately continuing the earlier conversation.

“I used to put your eyepatches in the white wash because I was too lazy. It’s why your favourite t-shirt is grey.”

“W- what?”

“Yeh, and once when you were away at a conference I had a house party and I didn’t tell you but somebody emptied the fire extinguisher into the hamster cage and that’s why Nibbles died, I think.”

“Fareeha, did you hear what I –”

“I really loved Nibbles.”

_So I never had a father because mum had an affair? All this time I thought that she lost him in some dreadful insurgent firefight, that it was the war’s fault, an injustice done to my family by the enemy. But…_

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I think it was Hannah Perkins. She had a few too many Bacardi Breezers.”

“Are you still talking about Nibbles?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to keep talking about Nibbles?”

“Yes. No. I – mum, I don’t think I can… why did you have to tell me, on top of everything that happened recently?”

“You deserved to know. If we really are going to make this work, mend the fences, I have to be honest with you, Fareeha. You are no longer a little girl. I can’t keep secrets from you because I think they will hurt you too much. You’ve been hurt enough already.”

Fareeha bit her lip. In her mind’s eye she saw the smiling face of her father, a man she did not remember. She knew him only through pictures and stories, a relationship entirely one-sided. She had imagined his wit, his bravery, perhaps his roguish charm. To know she had missed out on knowing him forever because Ana had an affair was painful. An old wound re-opened.

“Who was the German relief soldier?” She asked, wondering what sort of man could be worth Yusuf’s death.

To Fareeha’s disgust and surprise, Ana blushed slightly. Her aged hands twisted together in her lap. She looked like a toddler caught smearing paint on the white sofa.

“Ah, perhaps another time.”

“No. You said you were going to be honest with me. Well, go on then.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“He… he was a Major in the German army. His name… Fareeha, you must promise me not to storm out and punch something.”

“What was his name?”

“Major Reinhardt Wilhelm.”

A thunderclap struck Fareeha. Her whole world tilted slightly. “Like… Vice-Chancellor Wilhelm?”

“Yes.”

“Vice-Chancellor Wilhelm, who runs the university you teach at and I attend.” She said slowly. “Those ‘strings’ you kept saying you pulled to get me in here… did you… god, mum, you didn’t sleep with him to get me into uni, did you?”

Ana Amari might be many things, but willing to prostitute herself to assure her daughter a place in university was not one of them. She let out an aghast gasp and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Absolutely not! Fareeha, what do you think of me?”

“No idea any more.”

“I did not! I merely reminded him of the prestige and funding I bring to Overwatch, and pointed out that you had a rough couple of years and that your A-level grades did not reflect your true potential, and, I will, admit, I agreed to dinner.”

“Mum, I am questioning my whole existence right now.”

Ana gave a weak smile and stared down at the broken, tear-filled teacup. She seemed frankly disappointed that she could no longer drink her tea, so Fareeha pushed her own steaming cup over the table.

“May I?”

“Go for it. How many other members of staff have you ‘had dinner’ with to make my life easier? Winston? Mr. Morrison? Reyes? God forbid – Professor Vaswani?”

“Fareeha, please. I am not the painted whore of Overwatch. Winston is not, as far as I understand, interested in romance of any kind with anyone. Though I have heard him instructing the voice program on his computer to read out sections of dirty novels.”

Fareeha shuddered at the thought of Professor Winston lounging in his office while Athena slogged through Fifty Shades of Grey in her mechanical voice.

“As for Morrison and Reyes… must I really tell you?”

“Uncle Jack and Uncle Gabe haven’t been together in a long time, though.”

“Oh, they are, in their own, special way. I’m told it involves a lot of passive-aggressive emails and some rather long lunch breaks.”

“Mum! Eugh!”

“You asked.”

“Not for a play by play!”

Ana shrugged and took a graceful sip of tea. “Ah. Perfectly steeped. And Satya, as far as I know, is married to the golden ratio, though has flirted with Euler’s number and the Feigenbaum constant.”

This did not surprise Fareeha. She had sat through enough ‘Maths for Dumb Engineers’ lectures to have learned by now that Professor Vaswani was pretty kinky for advanced functions. Lena had once whispered to her, “I bet she gets naked and just recites pi until she reaches orgasm.”

“Okay, so you haven’t slept with half the faculty. But still! How could you not tell me all this about dad, and about Vice-Chancellor Wilhelm!”

“How could you not tell me you killed Nibbles with a fire extinguisher?”

“I did not!”

But Fareeha was smiling despite how confused she felt. Then, something struck her – a strange sense of kinship with Ana’s adulterous ways. She thought, finally, she should give a peace offering in this clusterfuck of a conversation.

“The, ah, cheating thing… it must run in the family.”

Ana fixed her with the most disapproving glare. “You aren’t messing that poor girl around, are you?”

Fareeha gasped. “You – you know?”

“That you like girls? Fareeha, please. You have a ‘Bodybuilder Babes’ calendar, and however much you insist that you look up to their physical achievements, I have seen you practice asking Miss February out.”

“I though I was subtle.” Fareeha muttered, mortified. She wondered where that calendar had gone. She missed Miss February.

“I’ve been wrangling Uncle Jack and Uncle Gabe for years. My gaydar is military-grade.”

Fareeha put her head in her hands. “Mum, never say ‘gaydar’ again.”

“Is that not the correct term? I do follow my own twitter hashtag with some amusement, you know. I am down with the kids.”

Fareeha had the awful feeling that Hana, though she looked to be slumped against the milk steamer snoring loudly, was livetweeting their whole conversation. There was something about the fluttering of her eyes under her eyelids and the twitching of her arms, the hands invisible below the counter. If there was anybody who could tweet with their eyes closed, it was Hana.

“Anyway. But I mean to say, um, you could offer me your sagely advice. Because you’re old.”

“Do tell.”

“So, I, um, I started seeing Lena – my housemate, you met her – near the start of term. And we were good friends, and we… we were also more than friends. And it was nice. But after the accident, with my back, I was awful to her in the hospital. We’ve been estranged for some time.”

“That saddens me. Lena seemed like a good girl.”

“But we never really talked about what we were. And there’s this other girl. She’s been helping me with my recovery. And I don’t know if she’s just been supportive, or because she’s a medical student, but sometimes I feel like we’re getting… close.”

Fareeha squirmed in her seat, victim to the blazing blush on her cheeks. Was she really telling her mum about her romantic problems? After all they’d been through today? Yet it seemed right, to be chatting to Ana about something as light and gossipy as girl problems.

“A medical student, you say? What is her name?”

“I’m not telling you, or you’ll get all weird in the medical school. I don’t want you to be harsh on her.”

“I’d do no such thing. I will simply advise her to treat you well. With a rifle pressed against her forehead. Loaded.”

“Why must you threaten anybody I like with weapons?”

“I’m doing my motherly duty. But what is wrong with this situation? Do you feel like you are cheating on Lena with this new girl?”

“No, not exactly. But I don’t know what Lena and I, or what she expects. I think I owe her an explanation, to tell her that we aren’t a couple or anything. But we’re hardly talking anymore. And Ang- and the other girl sometimes does affectionate things, but then stops herself suddenly. I think she thinks me and Lena are a thing and doesn’t want to break us up.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’d like a chance to talk to Lena and explain that didn’t feel awkward?”

“Exactly. But I don’t know –”

Fareeha trailed off at the evil look on her mother’s face. Ana was no longer looking at her, but somewhere over her shoulder. The door to the Watchpoint opened and the bell rang. Hana stirred from her fake sleep.

“Afternoon, Lena!”

Fareeha’s body went rigid like a statue. You’d think a gorgon had just given her a particularly stony stare.

“Hey, Hana. Busy day?”

“Nah, pretty dead.”

Lena hadn’t noticed Ana and Fareeha in the corner yet. She went to put her apron and badge on, and Ana signalled to Hana that she would like another pot of tea. Hana, who had now obviously been eavesdropping, gave an exaggerated wink and a thumbs up.

“Can you bring a pot of hot water to Professor Amari in the corner, Lena? I’m about to beat this level of Candy Crush.”

“You have the work ethic of a narcoleptic sloth, Hana.”

“I don’t know what that means but thank you.”

Lena rolled her eyes and drew up a pot of boiling water, bringing it over. “Here you go, Ana – ah, hiya, Fareeha.”

Lena attempted a jaunty wave and decided halfway to switch to a nod, which resulted in slapping herself in the face. Hana tittered behind the milk steamer.

“Lena, why don’t you come sit with us? I’m sure Hana will pick up the slack, and it isn’t exactly busy.” Ana said.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly, I’ve – er – there are lots of customers…”

Hana played the sound of crickets chirping from her phone as a gust of wind swept through the empty coffee shop. A bright red blush spreading up her neck, Lena perched herself on a stool beside their table.

“How is your project essay going?” Fareeha asked politely, looking fervently at a napkin as though trying to levitate it with her mind.

“Er, I haven’t really done much of it yet.” She admitted. “I wanted to expand on the sound-barrier breaking stuff of concorde, but it looks like a dead end.”

“Perhaps you and Fareeha can arrange a study date in the library and help each other with your projects.” Ana said quietly. She sipped her new cup of tea to hide the devilish smile on her lips. Fareeha swallowed a small noise of desperation. Her mum had no right to tease her like this!

“It’s kinda hard with my schedule of shifts…”

“I work better alone.”

Ana rolled her eyes. “Good god, I have enough of this with Gabe and Jack. Enough of this dancing!”

“Mum, don’t –”

“Lena, Fareeha wants to talk to you about your relationship. She’s being a stubborn little girl and if she bottles things up any longer I’m going to have to prescribe her some emotional laxatives.”

“Oh – er – yeah?” Lena made vague word-like noises and chanced a glance at Fareeha, who had buried her face in her hands.

“Mum…”

“This is how wars start, you know. When people don’t communicate properly. Fareeha, why don’t you tell Lena what you told me?”

“Lena, do you have a shovel in the stockroom?”

“No.”

“I want to dig a hole out of here. This is so embarrassing.”

“There’s a fire escape out back. If we’re quick, Professor Amari might not be able to catch us.”

Ana raised the eyebrow of no escape. Fareeha sighed, plumbed the depths of her soul for the courage to speak and addressed her red-faced monologue to Lena’s left ear.

“Are we dating? Or exclusive, or anything? Are you mad at me for what happened at the hospital? Because, well, there’s this girl and I really, really like her, but I haven’t said anything because I didn’t want to make you angry. And I don’t think I have any right to demand anything of you or go behind your back after how awful I was to you. It wouldn’t be just or fair to you.”

There was a very pregnant pause, in which Hana could be heard furiously whispering into her phone.

To everybody’s surprise, Lena’s face cracked into a broad grin. It lit up her features, stretching the freckles across her nose, eyes ablaze. She giggled, then broke out into chuckles, and finally clutched the edge of the table for support, hooting with laughter.

“I have to say I am questioning your taste in women, Fareeha.” Ana muttered, looking at Lena’s shaking body with great concern. “This one appears to have broken.”

“Lena, are you okay?”

“F-f-fine!” She stuttered out amidst her laughter. “Just… oh, Fareeha, you’re so sweet. I want to install a cat-flap for you and feed you small meaty biscuits.”

“Pardon?”

“I think she really is broken.” Ana said. “Turn her off and on again.”

“Sorry, sorry, my brain’s going off four leaps ahead.” Lena smacked the side of her skull. “I just mean, Fareeha, love, that it’s so like you to want to be all polite and just. I’m flattered that you thought you had to ask. No, we’re not going out. I like you a lot, and I enjoyed our – um, the thing I can’t say with your mum here.”

“No complaints from me, I’m glad she’s finally getting some.”

“Mum!”

“What? You needed to loosen up a little, _ya amar_.”

Fareeha offered a silent prayer to a number of likely gods that the ground would swallow her up and spit her back out somewhere far, far away.

“But I think we should just be mates. I’ve missed having you around, Fareeha. Who’ll glare dissaprovingly at me when I break rules if you’re not there? And as for this new lady… well, you know aeronautical engineers make the best wingwomen. Literally. Because we study planes, and planes have –”

“Wings, thank you, Lena.”

“I’m just so relieved! I thought you were pissed at me for being a wet blanket after what happened on Halloween, I wanted to give you space to get back on your feet. Metaphorically and physically, because you had to do all that –”

“Rehab, yes, thank you, Lena.”

“But this is ace! Oh, I can’t tell you how relieved I am!” As if to demonstrate that her relief was beyond simple words, Lena sprang to her feet, threw herself bum-first onto the bench next to Fareeha, and threw her arms around her shoulders. Fareeha patted her uncertainly, and true to character, Lena was already back standing up, her thumbs hooked into her apron.

“I’ll see you at home, okay?” She asked. “We’ve got a whole new season of Breaking Bad to watch on Netflix.”

“You… you didn’t watch it by yourself?”

“What? No! It’s our show, ‘Reeha! I’ll pick up some popcorn and M&Ms. We’ll have a late night watchathon.”

She blew a friendly kiss and jogged away into the back room, beaming. Fareeha was left sitting very upright, blinking furiously, and feeling as though shellshocked.

“Well, I’d best be going as well. Lots of lectures to plan.” Ana said, finishing her tea. “Though, I can sort of see why you liked her.”

“Why?”

Ana’s smile was wicked again. “She seems like she’d be an… ‘enthusiastic’ bedfellow.”

“Mum!”

 

-0-

 

**D.Va**

(@DVaGaming)

@hipstercratic_oath NOW IS THE MOMENT, MOVE IN, THE OBJECTIVE IS CLEAR YOU CAN CAP THE POINT

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

@DVaGaming is that tweet in English???? #confused

 

**D.Va**

(@DVaGaming)

@hipstercratic_oath oh ffs. Falcon and Squirrel are no longer shagging. Slide into her DMs. Sliiiide, my friend #go #get #the #girl


	12. A Christmas Miracle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT THE EASTER EGG HAS BEEN FOUND IT WAS VIOLETNOVICE AGAIN gosh darn, if you want to know what it was check the comments in chapter 2, if you want to still try and figure it out for yourself then don't look. Congrats!  
> Okay, so, much housekeeping before actual fic. First, thank you all for being amazing, leaving kudos and comments, it makes me so damn happy to see the kudos email when I'm struggling through a hectic shift at work.  
> Third, I promised a Pharmercy supernatural AU for Halloween. I wrote 10k of it and I don't like it. It takes itself too seriously and I wanna write something a bit more light-hearted and 'pulpy', if you get what I mean. More romance and indulgent supernatural shenanigans and less existential dread and corpses (which is what I've written). So I'm probs going to re-write, or shelve it for now and concentrate on something else. I might do some commissions/requests, but for that I probs need a proper tumblr to communicate. I've been using tumblr for 5 years and believe it or not I've never managed to figure out how anything except the reblog button works.  
> THUS: ARGO IS SEEKING A HELPFUL PERSON. Tumblr guru to help me set up a thing. Would pref somebody willing to PM/skype/ventrilo/etc. Please do get in touch via my personal tumblr argonautic4l.  
> Also, please, I need people to play Overwatch with. I swear if I have to deal with another attack Hanzo or cocaine-addled hopping Genji spamming me for heals I will smash my PS4 over my head. My PSN is Argonauticall (second L at the end) and I play on EU servers I guess since i'm in the UK. I wonder if we'll have to leave the EU servers after Brexit. *deeply political sigh*  
> Thus, on with the show, and enjoy your //finally// Pharmercy.

It was a Christmas miracle. All was right in the world. For Lena and Fareeha, their friendship was restored and the frosty feel around number thirty-nine had melted. They would never be able to forget the intimacy they had shared as friends with benefits, but instead of being awkward, it had birthed a wonderfully close friendship.

Lena was curled in Fareeha’s lap in their empty sitting room watching television. They had no fire, but had ‘rescued’ a space heater from one of the rooms on the second floor. Toasty under blankets and dressing gowns to keep away the chill of the old, damp house, they lounged around, ate junk food and played on Lena’s Xbox.

Night fell, bringing with it a clear, biting chill. Happy and befuddled, Lena checked her phone, which had buzzed in her pocket.

 

**Lúcio**

<attached picture message>

 

**Lúcio**

Doin an xmas gig-athon in my hometown tonight so wont be free to wish happy xmas at midnight! Feliz Navidad Lena! <3 x

 

He’d sent a selfie showing him in a dingy underground venue, halfway through setting up his sound equipment. The cartoon frog head of his costume rested atop a stack of amps, a santa hat perched atop it.

 

**Lena**

Merry xmas from Blighty too mate! Don’t forget to open the prezzie I gave you before you left! :* xxxxxx

 

“Holy tea cosies! It’s Christmas eve!” She realised belatedly.

“You aren’t keeping track? I thought you had a chocolate advent calendar?”

“Well, you know me. I’m not exactly patient. I ate it all by like the twelfth.”

Fareeha rolled her eyes. “The Watchpoint is closed for the holiday, isn’t it?”

“Yep, until the twenty-seventh.”

“Are you planning anything? For Christmas, I mean. Going home to see your family?”

“Are you joking? I love my folks, but the Oxton family is huge and I’m the oldest of all the kids. It’s a bit of a clusterfuck over Christmas dinner. And if I have to listen to my Great-Aunt Phyllis ask me why I don’t have a boyfriend yet, I’ll commit seppuku.”

“But you don’t want to go see everybody? If I had more family than just me and mum, I’d go.”

“Eh, it’s better this way. One less mouth to feed. Mum and dad know I love them and I sent my cards and presents ages ago.”

“Have they sent your presents to here, then?” Fareeha asked. She hadn’t seen any.

Lena wriggled, suddenly uncomfortable. “Christmas presents are expensive. I don’t want mum and dad to have to shell out for me. I told them not to bother, spend the money on my little brothers instead.”

“That’s… very noble.”

Lena shrugged, accidentally elbowing Fareeha in the boob. “Not really. It’s just sensible.”

“Get off a sec, I need the loo.” Fareeha said, slipping out from under the covers and going upstairs to the first floor toilet. Once she had locked the door, she began texting furiously.

 

**Fareeha**

(to Angela, Mei-Ling, Lúcio, Jesse, Genji, Aleksandra and Hana)

_EMERGENCY: guys, Lena just told me she wont be getting xmas presents from her parents tomorrow. I’ve got her something small but we need to help!_

**Angela**

_BakeSoc on it. Number 39 xmas party? Lunch? Me and Mei will cook._

 

**Lúcio**

_Check second drawer in my bedside table! I got something for her but forgot to give it before I flew home!_

**Genji**

_I’ll get the Shimada personal shopper on it ASAP. Yes to xmas lunch at 39 too. I’ll ditch Hanzo and the fam._

**Hana**

_I’ll rally my twitter followers. Operation: Xmas Booty is a go!_

**Aleksandra**

_Will bring many bottles vodka?_

**Hana**

_I don’t know you well, Zarya, but you r my new bff._

**Lúcio**

_Don’t give the little goblin too much alcohol. Last time she got drunk she started stripping during her Starcraft stream._

**Hana**

_Say wot u want Lúcio I gained lk 3k followers after that._

**Genji**

_Hana is a streamer? Would I know her stream?_

**Hana**

_Yh check me out on twitch @notgoingtotellyou_

**Genji**

_There’s no user by the name._

**Genji**

_Oh I see what you did there well played, little goblin._

Fareeha locked her phone, flushed the toilet just to complete her ruse, and slipped back downstairs. Lena looked around at her from the sofa.

“You look really pleased with yourself. Take a really big shit?”

“No. No, nothing like that.” She smiled, burrowed back under the blankets and allowed Lena to get comfy on her lap again.

Some three hours later, her phone buzzed again.

 

**Jesse**

_Sorry im late 2 the convo. Whats this about dinner? I like food. I’ll come_

**-0-**

Fareeha’s alarm clock rang at five in the morning on Christmas day. She turned it off after a second and got out of bed, putting on a pair of slippers to muffle her footsteps. Next to her door was a sack full of the presents she had managed to gather for Lena yesterday. Masking the arrival of several different people at the door to covertly hand them over, as well as sneak into Lúcio’s room to get his present had been difficult. But Fareeha was not one to give up. Her secret Santa-ing was nothing compared to learning to walk again.

With the sack over her shoulder she tiptoed across the landing and eased Lena’s bedroom door open. Lena was sprawled in bed, covers rumpled, one foot sticking out and twitching. Her short and messy hair was splayed all over her pillow, and she muttered unintelligibly about fire hydrants and walruses.

Fareeha set the sack down at the end of her bed and started pulling presents out. The perfectionist in her wouldn’t allow shoddy present display, so she stacked them nicely. Every rustle of wrapping paper threatened to wake Lena, but in the end Fareeha snuck out, leaving a pile of bright and glittering presents at the foot of Lena’s bed.

She went back into her room and seeing as she was awake already began her morning workout. It had changed drastically since the accident, but she was still committed to regaining her fitness. Instead of pushing herself, she had to be conservative, but still got in a good workout and then took a short shower to clean herself up.

Lena dozed on through the morning, an unusual luxury for a girl who was normally up at the arsecrack of dawn to go for a run and to work. Fareeha wasn’t complaining, because it gave her a chance to set everything up.

The doorbell rang just before ten, announcing the arrival of Angela and Mei. They had co-opted Zarya and her bulging muscles to carry an incredible number of shopping bags, which were deposited in number thirty-nine’s small kitchen. Angela and Mei blitzed the grimy kitchen, leaving it sparkling clean and fit to produce human nourishment.

Soon a leg of lamb was roasting in the oven and Fareeha was helping Angela chop vegetables and potatoes. Mei was trying to teach Zarya how to make canapés with filo pastry, and Zarya proved to have surprisingly gentle and steady hands when handling the delicate paper-thin sheets of filo.

Genji turned up laden with shopping bags. It was the first time that Fareeha appreciated that he was actually the son of one of the richest businessmen in the world. He put presents for all of them, lavishly wrapped, under the cardboard cut-out of a Christmas tree that Lena and Fareeha had made with a broom handle and several used pizza boxes. Hana burst in just as the heard Lena waking up and walking sleepily to the toilet. She connected her phone to the speakers via Bluetooth and started playing Christmas tunes.

“’Reeha?” Lena muttered. She came down the stairs in the huge hoodie she still hadn’t given back to Zarya after that night in the hospital and her girl boxers, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “You won’t believe it, but I think Father Christmas came last night.”

“What?” Fareeha asked in her best attempt at acting. All the others were hidden out of sight.

“There are a load of presents by my bed. They aren’t yours, are they? I don’t know how they got in my room.” She started to wake up properly and notice the state of decoration of the sitting room and the smell of a roast dinner. “Are you cooking? We’re havin’ Christmas lunch! You shouldn’t have!”

Then everybody burst out of the kitchen and mobbed Lena, shouting ‘merry Christmas!’ The poor girl was so stunned that she could only stutter.

“W-what? Eh? Why’s everybody here?”

“To celebrate festive season with you, dummy.” Zarya punched Lena’s arm in a friendly manner, sending her stumbling into the sofa.

“So the presents… they’re all for me?”

“All for you.” Fareeha affirmed. Lena’s eyes went wide, and then filled with tears. She leapt up and hugged Fareeha tightly. Not one of her quick hugs, either. It was long and tight, like a koala clinging for dear life to a tree.

“Thanks, Fareeha.” Lena said. Then, like the hyperactive child she was, she sprinted upstairs to grab all of her presents, shouting and screaming about a Christmas miracle.

Fareeha felt a hand touch her shoulder and turned to see Angela standing beside her. She was wearing a white woollen poloneck jumper several sizes too big for her, and her hair was slightly dishevelled from the work of cleaning and cooking.

“That was a really nice thing you did for her, Fareeha.” Angela said. “So you got back together, I take it?”

“Actually, the opposite. We agreed to just be friends.”

Angela’s eyes widened. “Oh. I didn’t expect that. You seem very happy with each other.”

“We are. It’s nice to have her as a close friend… I didn’t really have too many close friends before I can to Overwatch. I think people found me scary.”

Angela was going to say something related to Fareeha being a tall, muscular and imposing-looking person, but stopped herself because Hana and Zarya were arm-wrestling and her medical student senses were tingling.

“Zarya, please don’t break Hana’s arm. A&E is always packed on Christmas day.”

“I will not break arm of small skinny goblin child.” Zarya grunted, flexing her muscles. “Just show her who is the boss.”

“Try me, nab.” Hana taunted, rolling up her sleeve. Her arm was comically tiny compared to Zarya’s.

Lena came back downstairs practically exploding with glee. The presents that they’d managed to find for her were small and inexpensive, but the way she thanked them and gushed about them you’d think they were diamonds. Fareeha had used her faculty contacts to source a copy of the elusive textbook _Harpmann’s Aeronautics Primer_ , heralded as the most useful guide to the subject but always signed out of the library and costing a small fortune to buy. In addition to cooking the huge roast lunch, Angela and Mei had baked a week’s worth of confectionary and given Lena an apron that said _Taste my Hot Cross Buns_ with hot cross buns where the boobs would be. Lúcio’s present was a cuddly frog in a pilot’s uniform. Hana offloaded a load of free merchandise from her sponsorship deals and Genji had commissioned personalised hoodies for each of them with their Athletics or BakeSoc nicknames.

“Why does mine say ‘Tracer’?” Lena asked, holding it up.

Genji gave his sly snicker. “Well, you know how we were talking about nicknames on that first night out, in Numbani?”

“Yeh…”

“When you and Fareeha left… disappeared ‘without a trace’, so to speak, we decided that should be your nickname.”

“It was either that or Pussy Galore, and I have veto on hoodie design.” Zarya said, arms crossed.

“I told you, it’s a James Bond reference.”

Zarya evidently did not believe him. They all changed into their hoodies – or rather, put them on top of their clothes, because number thirty-nine was very chilly despite the heat from the over. Fareeha’s had Pharah on the back like Lena had joked about at Numbani. Angela was, much to her chagrin, Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls. She suspected Hana had been consulted.

“What does yours mean, Mei?” Lena asked as they laid the table.

“I can answer that.” Angela said. Mei blushed sheepishly. “When Mei first joined BakeSoc, we had a baking social. She was a bit clumsy with a bag of icing sugar and she dropped it. It exploded everywhere – all over the floor, the kitchen, everybody. We were all covered in icing sugar and it took days to clean it up and get the stickiness out of my hair and clothes. So, to mark her shame, Mei is Icing Satan.”

“I’m not in Athletics or BakeSoc, do I get one, Genji?” Hana asked as Mei and Angela went to take the food out of the oven.

“Well, I did buy something for you, but after the rude messages last night, I’m @notgoingtogiveittoyou.”

Hana cursed and waggled a finger at him. “Gah! Well played. Well played. But don’t think I’ll forget this.”

They all gathered around the table as lunch was served. Somehow, in their tiny kitchen, Angela and Mei had managed to cook a delicious roast dinner. Lamb, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, gravy, pigs in blankets, stuffing, carrots and parsnips and peas. Everything was delicious. They even set aside a plate for McCree, who they knew by now would turn up late.

Fareeha couldn’t think of a time she’d felt happier. Everybody was talking, joking, pulling crackers and trying to stack as many paper crowns on Hana’s head as possible. They drank awful wine and stuffed themselves with food. On every face was a smile. This, she thought, is what it feels like to have a proper family.

As if the day could not get any better, they heard a shriek from Lena and all turned to her.

“What? Did you accidentally swallow the fifty pence in the Christmas pudding?”

“No! Look! It’s snowing!”

All eyes snapped to the sitting room window. Sure enough, the wind blew a sheet of spiralling snowflakes past them, settling on the cobblestones of King’s Row. Fareeha stared, entranced. They were warm inside, well-fed and toasty, with presents and good company, and outside it was a white Christmas. Her heart swelled in her chest.

“I want to go look.” Angela said to her very quietly. “Shall we go look at the snow?”

Fareeha took her hand and they excused themselves to go look at the snow. Hana stood up and said she wanted to go too, but Zarya and Genji grabbed her and pulled her back down.

“What? Let me go!”

“You can go later.”

“Why can’t I go now?”

“Because – I’ll explain when you’re older.”

“I’m the same age as you, noob!”

The door swung shut behind them. Suddenly everything was blanketed in silence but for the rustle and sweep of falling snow. Most students had gone home and King’s Row was deserted. Afternoon was turning into twilight, the antique streetlamps flickering into life.

“It’s so beautiful.” Fareeha said, watching the snow flutter past and settle in Angela’s hair. “I’m so glad I’m here to see it.”

“What do you mean?”

Fareeha hesitated. She’d only revealed this to the counsellor Zenyatta before, but decided it was time to confide in Angela. After all, she’d helped her through every other stage of recovery.

“There was a time, in hospital. When I thought I would never get better. When I thought my future was destroyed, and I’d never feel joy again. I wanted to… I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. Just move on, to wherever the next place is. I felt like such a burden on you all, I was making everybody worry. And I nearly… I nearly…”

She took a deep, shaky breath and choked back tears. Angela’s hand slipped comfortingly into her own.

“And now?”

“I’m glad I didn’t. I would have missed out on all of this. Making amends with my mum, finding new friends – new family. And I wouldn’t have been able to spend time with you.”

Fareeha’s stomach somersaulted. She glanced at Angela’s face, half-obscured by her turtleneck and hoodie. She was smiling, blue eyes gazing straight back at her.

“You know, there never was a study into spinal fracture recovery.”

“No? You took all those notes.”

“I just wanted an excuse to get to know you.” Angela said, colour reddening her cheeks. “To find out about the woman who stopped the pickpockets and would do anything to protect her friends.”

“And, um, what did you find out in the end?” Fareeha asked. Angela’s hand in hers pulled, and suddenly they were standing very close to each other, Fareeha looking down at Angela as the snow swirled and spiralled around them.

“I’ve found out that she’s all I expected and more.”

Angela stood up on her tiptoes and kissed Fareeha for just a second on the lips. The smell of baking and cooking rolled off her, warm and wholesome. The breeze blew the stray strands of Angela’s hair against Fareeha’s cheeks, tickling her and making her smile despite herself.

“If that was the expected, I want to know what the ‘more’ is.” Fareeha whispered, her breath caught in the throat, her heart dancing a jig between her collarbones.

Angela circled her arms in their warm woollen sleeves around her neck and pulled herself up to press against Fareeha’s lips again. This kiss was longer, more confident, deeper. She tasted like minty lip balm and something unidentifiable but sweet. Angela’s lips were soft against her own much-bitten and chapped ones, moving slowly, their touch a caress.

There was a moment, perfect, eternal, like the whole scene had been preserved forever in a snow-globe. All of her doubts and worries fell away, and with Angela close to her, Fareeha knew for certain for the first time since the accident that she was whole again. She felt strong and pure and thrumming with wild energy.

She lifted Angela up in her muscular arms. Angela was very light, and gave a stifled cry of surprise into her mouth without breaking the kiss, but clung on tighter and tightened her grip around Fareeha’s neck. Fareeha twirled around, drunk with the feeling, like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

How long they stayed like that, kissing, rotating like dancers in the snow, they didn’t know. But then again, they didn’t really care either.


	13. Remember and Forget

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello chums! Argo here. I have a feeling you're going to want to stab me in the eye with a pen for this chapter.  
> Massive thanks to everybody who has added me on PSN or followed me on Tumblr! You almost didn't get this chapter on time because *SOMEONE* was distracting me all week with Best Attack Symmetra/Pharmercy shenanigans. If you fancy playing with me, find me on PSN as Argonauticall, or on Tumblr at argonautic4l.  
> As always, thank you for your kudos and feedback, your comments make me do a smol happy dance every time I get an email notification <3

Evening found Fareeha and Angela intertwined on the sofa in number thirty-nine’s living room, Angela resting her head in the crook of Fareeha’s neck, covered by a blanket. Everybody was very drunk, very full, and very sleepy. The fan heater roared and sputtered in the corner, and nobody was watching the Christmas special on TV.

Lena was upstairs sorting out her presents, tenderly placing them around her room, the pilot frog plushie on her pillow. Snow was falling faster now, great spirals of it dancing across the windowpane. A chilly breeze ghosted across the back on Lena’s neck and she noticed that her window was cracked open just an inch. She crossed to it to close it, and it was then she saw Amélie.

She was at her window, sitting on the sill, but she hadn’t noticed Lena observing her. Instead Amélie’s gaze was fixed on the ground floor window. The warm orange light and flickering of the television spilled out into the street. The warmth didn’t seem to reach Amélie’s face, trapped behind her window in the tower of her fourth-floor room. No lights were on inside.

Amélie was crying.

The sight shocked Lena more than anything else. Small pearly tears welled up in her eyes and slid down her pale cheeks, but never for a second did she tear her stare from where everybody was gathered together in the living room.

_She’s all alone on Christmas_ , Lena thought. The idea of it made a stab of guilt and pity lance up into her chest. Here she was, with her friends, food, and presents, and there was a girl all by herself crying as she looked longingly into the alien world of brightness and cheer opposite her. Lena had already gotten Amélie injured once. It was unfair to leave her like this. After all, if she’d learned anything from Fareeha, it was that not acting when you knew something was wrong was as bad as committing that wrong yourself.

She rapped on the newly-repaired window with her knuckles, startling Amélie so much that she tumbled off the sill and had to look around wildly for the source of the noise. She finally locked eyes with Lena and reflexively shrank backwards, body freezing up and arms raised as if to defend herself.

Lena waved. Amélie frowned in confusion, so Lena waved again and gave a questioning thumbs-up. Amélie raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms over her chest.

This wasn’t getting her point across very well at all, so Lena switched tactics. She let out a big breath onto the window, fogging up the glass, and wrote backwards so that Amélie would be able to read it.

_Alone?_

After a second, Amélie nodded curtly.

_Why?_

Lena couldn’t read lips, but even she could see when somebody said ‘none of your business’ with such venom. Amélie turned her back to Lena and began to vanish into the gloom of her room, but Lena desperately knocked again and she dared to glance back over her shoulder.

_Come._

Amélie shook her head, but Lena circled the word again to belabour her point. Amélie pulled the curtains abruptly closed.

“Not great manners, that one.” Lena muttered, making up her mind. She dashed downstairs and slipped out of the front door without anybody noticing. Zarya had fallen asleep with a large tankard of spiced rum in her hand and was spilling small amounts every time she gave a loud, grunting snore. Fareeha was running her fingers through Angela’s hair as the two snuggled. Lena was happy for her, though a small twinge of jealousy at the intimacy made itself known in her gut. Mei might have glimpsed her out of the corner of her eye, but returned to her whispered conversation with Genji almost immediately.

It was freezing outside. ‘Colder than a nun’s vagina’, as Lena was fond of saying. This had earned her quite a beating from Sister Mary Josephine in primary school.

Snow settled quickly in Lena’s untidy hair, frosting her like a small, fancy cake. She tried the front door of number thirty-eight, but it was locked, so she went around the back and climbed the rusty fire stairs up to the fourth floor. There was no way that Amélie couldn’t hear her rapid-fire knocking on the fire exit.

For what seemed like hours Lena waited, hoping and praying that Amélie would change her mind and open the door. At the very least, she owed her and apology for what had happened on Halloween. Yes, she would apologise and then pop back into the warm glow of her own house.

The door creaked open.

Lena barrelled through into the dark corridor, tripping on the uneven carpet and all of the crap left by students who had gone home for the holidays. At the very end, the door to room thirteen was wide open, and Amélie was sitting by the window, silhouetted menacingly in the faded light from the streetlamps.

“You just need to be stroking a white cat or somethin’.” Lena said nervously, stepping closer. “I feel like you’re about to pull a lever and drop me into a pit of pirhanas.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

Lena didn’t quite know why, but Amélie’s rich voice sent a thrilling little shiver up her spine. She felt like the heroine in a movie, walking into a dark web-covered cave littered with small skeletons. Normally she’d be yelling at the TV screen and telling the heroine not to be so stupid. And now here she was.

“No lights on?”

“I prefer the dark.”

“Oh. I thought you might be tryin’ to go green. Save the planet, one creepily unlit bedroom at a time.”

Amélie snorted, which Lena took as encouragement and stepped past the threshold into Amélie’s room. Last time she had been in here had been Halloween. There was no smashed glass this time, but everything else was the same. Perhaps it was a bit untidier. A book laid on the bedside table, the page marked with a fancy bookmark. _The Bell Jar_ by Sylvia Plath.

“So, er, you’re not home for Christmas?”

“… Obviously.”

“Right. Silly question. Look, I just wanna say… um… sorry about Halloween. And that stuff that happened. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I’m sorry that you got caught up in the crazy.”

Amélie waved away her apology, and as she did so, Lena caught sight of her right arm. She had only seen it heavily bandaged in the hospital or covered with jumpers. The hundreds of shards of glass from the broken window had slashed a lattice of scars across Amélie’s arm, still red and raised. It looked like the skin itself had fractured. She saw Lena looking and quickly hid the arm in shame.

“The people around you seem to get injured quite often, Lena Oxton.” Amélie commented, smirking as Lena’s hands curled into guilty fists. “Though I see Fareeha has made a complete recovery. How… lucky.”

Lena couldn’t stop the outburst. “Why’re you so damn rude? What a surprise you’re all alone in the dark on Christmas, because you’re so miserable nobody wants to be your friend! I came over here to keep you company because I felt sorry for you – I can’t believe I felt sorry for you! – and all you’ve done is be all derisive and nasty and I just want to help!”

This tirade seemed to shock Amélie into silence for a few seconds, in which Lena panted and fiddled with her belt loops.

“Help? Coming uninvited into my room and shouting at me is… helping?”

“You know what I mean!”

“I’m quite sure I don’t, chérie.” Amélie crossed her arms and smirked while Lena mouthed soundlessly, trying to continue their match of wits.

“Well then you – er – you should go suck on a box of frogs!”

Amélie laughed, low, rich, true. She covered her mouth with her hand to try and stifle the giggles, but they escaped regardless. “Is that an English saying that does not quite translate?”

Lena let her think that.

“But I really did come over to keep you company. If you wanted.” Lena said. “Nobody should be alone in the cold and the dark on Christmas.”

Amélie shrugged, the laughter gone from the room in an instant. She sat gracefully down upon her desk chair and gestured that Lena could perch on the end of the bed if she pleased. Hesitantly, Lena sat. The covers were incredibly soft, silky Egyptian cotton. She couldn’t resist running her hands over them, noting the intricate but subtle embroidery.

“These things happen.”

“Yeh, but, still. We’re all havin’ a great time across the road and you were staring so hard. Like if you wished hard enough you’d teleport into our living room.”

“I…” Amélie cast her eyes across the road again to where Genji and Hana were seeing who could stack the most gingerbread men on Zarya’s face while she slept. “I suppose I did wish.”

“You can come over if you want.”

Amélie shook her head. “No, it would ruin your party.”

“Rubbish. Everybody’s half-asleep anyway. And it’s freezing in here, we’ve got a fan heater. You said in the hospital that your heart’s all messed up and you don’t have good blood flow, well, I’m no med student but I reckon it can’t be good for you to get too chilly.”

“I should not have told you that.”

“Well, ya did. Morphine haze and all that. Can’t take it back now.”

That Gallic shrug again. God, it was hard keeping a conversation going if Amélie was going to reply mostly with shrugs and eyebrow-raises.

“Get any good presents?”

“Some books. A coat. Angela insisted upon giving me this – this _thing_.”

Amélie gestured to a hoodie on the back of her chair, Lena recognising it as one of the BakeSoc/Athletics hoodies Genji had gotten commissioned. The name on the back was _I don’t like cake… I LOVE CAKE_. It didn’t make any sense to Lena, and she couldn’t imagine severe, brooding Amélie ever saying such a thing.

“Maybe if you put it on you wouldn’t be shivering so much.”

“I am not shivering.”

Amélie’s teeth chose that sentence to chatter loudly. She scowled at Lena. No way was she putting on that god-awful garment. It was pink!

But Lena had already jumped to her feet and snatched the hoodie, waving it in Amélie’s face. “If you freeze to death, who will be there to repeatedly bash into me on campus?”

“I’m sure I can arrange a suitable substitute.”

“C’mon, Amélie. Put the hoodie on.” Lena’s tone had changed. It was concerned. Amélie sighed, rolled her eyes, and pulled the stupid thing over her head.

“Well, I gotta say, hot pink is not your colour.”

“Thank you.”

The hoodie was too big for Amélie, and she sat on her desk chair swamped in it, her dark scowl at odds with the garish neon pink colour. Lena realised with a start that she was still right beside the chair, within a hair’s breadth of her, and took a couple of awkward steps back. She didn’t think Amélie was the type to enjoy having her personal space invaded.

Amélie glowered at a vague place in the middle distance, delighting Lena with the light blush on her pale cheeks. Her long, thin fingers fluttered and fiddled with the wide cuffs of the hoodie. The tense silence deepened, until Lena realised with a squeal of delight that Amélie was quiet because she was _shy_.

“So, you’ve got me for yourself for the whole of Christmas evening. Lena Oxton, professional distraction. What d’ya wanna do?”

 

*

 

Amélie thought about it for a moment. What _did_ she want to do? It had been some time since she had been asked that, given that choice. Lena Oxton stood waiting expectantly, bright-eyed and full of energy, so _eager_. Somewhere distant and inconsequential in the back of her mind, Amélie felt something stir. What the feeling was, she didn’t know. Perhaps a sort of fondness.

“I… I don’t really know.”

“Well, what do you like doing?”

Panic exploded inside Amélie, strange, unasked for. Why had the question set her heart pumping erratically? It took her a second. What even did she enjoy? When was the last time she’d felt happy, the last time she’d done something for the sake of fun? All the hobbies she’d had years ago, why had she stopped doing them? Why had they become dull, grey, unable to stir her emotions?

She spent her days in the dark and quiet, afraid of the slightest intrusion into her secrecy, weak and fragile. She read – yes, she read a lot of books these days. She studied hard and occasionally, when forced, she attended BakeSoc meetings. They always made her anxious and left her exhausted and paranoid. But she went anyway.

The publishing of the article weighed heavily on her. She couldn’t go out or show her face right now. She had to stay hidden. The website had published her old school photograph next to Gérard’s, her face was out there. Somebody could recognise her, and then the small amount of reprieve she’d managed to get by moving to London would be gone.

The panic rose and crested, her palms sweaty, body seized up. The miss-a-beat rhythm of her heart hurt, her fingertips buzzing with pins and needles, mind stalled with gears grinding against each other uselessly. Why couldn’t she – what was happening – she needed to –

“A- Amélie?” Lena asked, backing away slightly. Amélie regarded her, the fear on her face. She knew. Lena somehow, though it made no sense, had guessed, or she’d found out, she’d come over because she’d seen the article, she knew what Amélie had done!

Amélie launched at her, knocking Lena backwards onto the bed. Lena would tell everybody. Amélie would go to prison again, she’d have to stand trial again. Her parents would cry. Everything would go cold. Lena knew! Lena knew! Lena knows!

The fake certainty was enough to bring on the shift. Amélie almost… almost had wanted it. She wasn’t strong enough to do what needed to be done herself. Widowmaker would have to do it. Widowmaker felt no remorse. She would get rid of Lena and ensure that the secret stayed secret. It was a shameful relief to hand over control and the blame to Widowmaker.

Lena struggled, taken aback by Amélie’s sudden lunge. “What the fuck’re you –”

A hand pressed over her mouth and nose, the deprivation of oxygen a shock to Lena’s system. Adrenaline shot through her body. Amélie was taller, but Lena was twice as fit. She wriggled out of Amélie’s grip and made a break for it, gasping for air and running haphazardly for the door. A hand snatched at her ankle and brought her crashing face-first into the ground. Lena felt a great pressure followed by an awful ‘pop’ inside her skull, and sure enough blood began to pour out of her nose. Red blotches soaked into the carpet.

“Get away!” She yelled, trying to kick at Amélie. The grip loosened enough for her to scramble up and sprint towards the sweet escape of the fire exit.

“Irritating little mouse.” A voice quite unlike Amélie’s said from behind her. Here, Amélie’s long legs proved able to close the distance down the corridor faster. Lena’s world spun. A brief attack of vertigo later she came to her senses pushed up against the wall, face pressed to the peeling wallpaper. Amélie held her hands in a vice-like grip behind her, twisting her elbows back. There was no chance of escape like this.

“Stop squirming.” The woman hissed into her ear. Lena did not comply, earning a painful twist of her wrists that stretched the tendons to their breaking point.

“What the hell are you?”

“Widowmaker.” Amélie said. “You _know_.”

“Know? What? That you’re a fuckin’ psycho?”

Amélie’s knee slammed into the back of Lena’s, making her cry out to the empty house. The blackest of all panicked thoughts struck Lena. Nobody was here. The snowfall outside blanketed all sound. Her friends were sleeping far across the road, and she hadn’t told any of them she was leaving. How stupid could she have been? She was… she was going to die here, wasn’t she?

The seconds ticked by. Amélie held her there, blood oozing down her face from her broken nose, arms in painful torsion.

“Well, go on, finish me.” Lena choked out. She was thinking about her choice not to go home for Christmas to see her family. Because she was worried about being an expensive burden to them. What a stupid reason that felt like now.

“I don’t know what to do with you.” Amélie said. Her voice was hesitant, almost lost. “You’re not what I have been conditioned for.”

“I’m not – what?”

“I think I should kill you. To keep the secret. But you are not a boy. I am meant to kill boys.” Lena had absolutely no idea what was happening or what Amélie was going on about. “I have to ask.”

Lena felt Amélie’s grip shifting, then the tightness of her hands being bound behind her back with Amélie’s belt. The woman forced her back towards the bedroom and with another belt that was hanging in the cupboard secured her feet too, making sure to loop the belts both over the bedposts to anchor Lena in place.

Amélie crossed to the desk and opened up her computer. She clicked on the video chat application and initiated a call to the only person who could provide her with definitive orders for this unexpected situation.

“ _Amélie? Why are you calling? It’s Christmas._ ”

“ _Widowmaker, Docteur.”_

The man on the screen stiffened immediately. “ _What has happened?”_

_“A situation. I do not know what to do with her.”_

Amélie lifted up the laptop and pointed the camera towards where Lena was tied to the bed. Lena saw that she was talking in French to an older man, grey-haired and clean-shaven.

“ _What happened? Why do you have her tied up?”_

_“She knows. She knows what I did to Gérard. The secret can’t get out, can it, Docteur Griffe? So I must make sure she never tells. But I do not… I do not know how. She is not a boy, like you said. You said I should kill boys that I loved. But she is a girl, and I do not love her.”_

_“You did not love the last boy, the one in the nightclub.”_

_“No.”_ Widowmaker conceded, chewing her blue-tinged lip. “ _But I desired him.”_

_“Do you desire her?”_

Widowmaker turned to regard Lena again. Her face was bloody, hair dishevelled. She was crying, squirming in her bindings. The sight of wrapped, helpless prey pleased Widowmaker, but not enough. Amélie, however… Amélie had a certain fondness for this girl, an appreciation of how vital she was. Amélie was envious of Lena’s joie de vivre, her enthusiasm, her charisma. Tonight, when Lena had come to try and keep her company when she was all alone, it had developed past jealousy and become genuine… affection.

“ _No. Not yet.”_

Dr. Griffe nodded grimly and drummed his fingers pensively on his desk. “ _Before, I would have said kill her. But… you have developed more than I imagined. A body will be difficult to dispose of, easy to link back to you, and I want to keep you for myself for a while longer. No, I have a better idea. Fetch your prescribed medicines.”_

Widowmaker obeyed, opening one of the desk drawers to find a neat box of pills.

“ _Feed her the week’s of the red ones.”_

Widowmaker emptied out all of the pills, until she had a handful. She crossed to Lena and crouched down.

“Get the fuck away!” Lena spat at her, writhing and thrashing. “Amélie, what the fuck are you? Let me go!”

“Eat.” Widowmaker instructed, holding Lena’s jaw in her free hand. “They will not kill you. I take a low maintenance dose.”

“Fuck off!”

Lena earned the sharp pain of fingernails digging into her cheek and throat. Widowmaker managed to slip two of the pills in, and clamped her hand over Lena’s mouth and nose.

“Swallow and I will let you breathe.”

Lena flailed until exhaustion hit her. She swallowed and was rewarded with a shuddering lungful of oxygen.

“Now, again.”

Widowmaker repeated the torture until all of the pills had been swallowed.

“ _Good.”_ Said Dr. Griffe from the laptop screen, checking over his shoulder before he continued. “ _They will take a while to work. Listen carefully to my voice. My instructions. Are you listening?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Your tablets are a cocktail of drugs – truth serums, barbiturates, psychoactives, benzodiazepines – they will make her very suggestive for a short period of time and seriously impact her conscious memories of the last few hours. I do not have time to imprint anything deep or lasting upon her, like I have to you, Amélie. With you, I had years of weekly appointments. Now I have mere minutes. So you must do everything I say if we are to get away with this.”_

_“Tell me what to do.”_

_“I will used hypnotic techniques to plant doubts and false trails of consciousness in her mind. Soon she will fall into a deep stupor. You must take her back to her bedroom, place her there as though she had gone to sleep. Clean the blood from her. Leave empty bottles of alcohol near her bed. When she wakes up, she will think she drank too much.”_

Widowmaker nodded. Part of her loathed the idea of going through so much fuss to hide this when she could just kill Lena and be done with. But Dr. Griffe knew best. He had so painstakingly crafted Widowmaker over so many years. He was her maker and master.

“ _I do not know the kind of success we will see in this. But you will need to observe the girl for the next few weeks to ensure no memories are resurfacing. If this – well I suppose it is a bit of a ‘blitz’ tactic – if this works, perhaps I can look into developing her further.”_

Developing her further? Widowmaker felt a stab of jealousy. She was Dr. Griffe’s greatest success. He should concentrate on her, not on Lena.

“ _The girl is not… a good candidate_.” She said somewhat lamely.

“ _I’ll be the judge of that, thank you_.” He replied. From the floor, Lena gave a strange sighing moan, muttering slurred nonsense. “ _Now is the time. Bring the laptop in front of her face.”_

Widowmaker placed the glowing screen down right in front of Lena. She was glassy eyed, drool dripping from the corner of her mouth, mingling with the blood and tears. She stared at the screen as the calming voice of Dr. Griffe filled the room. Widowmaker could only perch on the bed, consumed by a jealousy and unease that she was unaccustomed to and having trouble controlling. Dr. Griffe was her master. He shouldn’t waste his effort and attention on Lena. Lena would never succumb like Amélie had. Amélie was always weak, suggestible, fragile. Her uncertainty and fear had been easy for Dr. Griffe to twist into Widowmaker. But Lena Oxton would never go the same way, she was too naïve, too bright-eyed and loving. And, thought Widowmaker in a very Amélie-like part of the back of her mind, it would be an awful thing to change Lena Oxton at all. She was stupid and perfect the way she was.

It was easy to take the tiny girl’s limp body back up to her bedroom half an hour later. Adrenaline began to wear off and Widowmaker slowly slipped away, leaving Amélie to clean up her mess. She tenderly wiped the blood from Lena’s face, placed the incriminating empty alcohol bottles, and sat for an hour in the corner of the room to make sure that Lena didn’t stop breathing. The drug cocktail Amélie took could depress the respiratory drive if taken in excess.

She idly nosed around Lena’s room while she waited, picking at the tatty clothing, garish décor and the presents Lena had been halfway through putting away. In a wild moment of whimsy, she snatched the stuffed toy of a frog in a pilot’s outfit and stole out of the room and back to her own.

Christmas night was long and lonely when you couldn’t sleep. Amélie buried her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and sat on her bed in the dark. She thought about what she had done. How she had _wanted_ Widowmaker to take over. The impulse scared her. She scared herself. She clutched the stuffed frog to her chest and counted the irregular beats of her heart until dawn came again.


	14. Lights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everybody! I apologise for the lateness of this chapter. I have been verily distracted. You know who you are and should feel deep shame. We have officially caught up to how much I wrote ahead, so updates may come a little slower from here on in. I'd also like to admit to being a massive womble re: replying to comments. I'm getting awful at it, and even though I am busy IRL I will be making a renewed effort to, since you guys make the effort of commenting.  
> This chapter is very 'two completely different parts'-y and very short, but have some more glorious feels-filled Pharmercy. I think we all need a bit of love and comfort given recent events.  
> As always, comments, kudos, etc always appreciated. Find me on Tumblr @argonautic4l or on PSN at Argonauticall if you fancy playing some Overwatch.
> 
> NOTICE: I am happy to be able to promise that this fic is 100% tarantula free and is committed to remaining so.

“Lena, are you alive in there?”

Lena stirred and groaned, turning over under her covers and burying her face in the duvet. This was the wrong thing to do. A burst of hot pain smashed into her skull and she howled, clutching her nose.

A pause from the other side of the door. “Lena, do you have _company_ in there?”

Lena’s head was pounding. She felt sick to her stomach. She gently felt her swollen, broken nose and then fumbled on her bedside table for her phone in panic to check it on the forward-facing camera. Her hand met and dislodged several bottles onto the floor.

What the hell?

She cracked an eye open and saw a bottle of cheap rum roll away under the bed. Several empty glasses with the remains of mulled wine and a whole sixpack of beers littered her room. She cast her mind back to the big, blank space that was last night. Oh, god, how drunk had she gotten?

“I’m coming in.”

“Nuhh- ugh.” But Fareeha had already entered in her paisley pyjamas and dressing gown. She saw the mess and the state of Lena and gasped.

“What did you get up to last night, hmm?”

“Nothin’. I mean, I dunno. Can’t remember. Did I do anything stupid?”

“Not that I recall. You went upstairs halfway through the Doctor Who Christmas special, and I fell asleep sometime after that. I didn’t see you.”

“Apparently neither did I.” Lena grumbled. “Oh fuck, my nose feels awful.”

“Lena – did you go up to your room and drink alone last night?”

“What? No! C’mon, love, you know me. I’m not the sort to…” Her words were rendered somewhat doubtful by the sheer number of empty bottles in her room. “Maybe I managed to score some company, but she left before I woke up?”

“And you can’t remember her at all?”

Lena strained her memory, but couldn’t recall a single thing. “Whatever happened, I blacked out. And I hurt my nose.”

“That’s broken.” Came a new voice from behind Fareeha. Angela had walked up the stairs, dressed in the same clothes and yesterday and nursing the sore neck of having slept on the sofa. “Let me take a look.”

Angela painfully prodded her nose to confirm her diagnosis. She sighed. “Ja. Broken. Seems we won’t avoid that visit to hospital after all.”

Boxing Day was then rather a bummer as Angela, Fareeha and Lena waited in Alderworth A&E for the second time that year. It was becoming a habit. A cheerful nurse in a hijab saw them, a Santa hat perched atop her head. When they asked why she was so happy, she told them that as a Muslim she did not celebrate Christmas so had volunteered to work today. She was getting triple pay. Fair dos, Lena thought.

Her nose was strapped with some kind of tension tape and she was prescribed painkillers and regular ice packs. They were out of there in time for tea, a feast of roast leftover sandwiches. One by one their guests left with many hugs and promises to do something for New Year, nursing the tell-tale soreness of having accidentally stayed over and slept in completely inappropriate places. They found Jesse McCree snoring in the bath.

“But you _live_ here, McCree! You have a room!”

He shrugged, wrapped himself in the shower curtain and went back to sleep.

Angela stayed the longest, engaging in sickeningly sweet PDA with Fareeha while the two of them doted on Lena and her mysterious blackout injuries. But Angela had to return to her flat eventually too, after about an hour of doorstep smooching. Lena rolled her eyes and snorted, but instantly regretted it as her nose twinged painfully.

Lena watched television and mooched around. She was feeling a familiar post-Christmas slump, when all the food is eaten, all the presents have been unwrapped and all the guests are gone. She glanced out of the living room window up at Amélie’s bedroom, wondering how she was doing. Wait – hang on – Amélie would have gone home for Christmas, wouldn’t she? She was an InterPusher. Loaded. Lena bet her mummy and daddy dearest had paid for a flight back to France business class for their prickly little princess.

Vague unease followed Lena around for the week after Christmas. It was probably mostly to do with the looming deadline of her project essay, which she still hadn’t gotten anywhere with. Fareeha wasn’t helping things, having study/makeout sessions with Angela every five minutes. She proudly displayed to Lena her essay, complete with several graphs, tables, schematics and a meticulously-organised bibliography. Lena had some scribbled notes on the back of a napkin and a doodle of an aeroplane with Hana’s face on the front.

So she procrastinated and procrastinated, using the age-old excuse that she did best under pressure anyway. Her essay subject changed with her second-short attention span, and as soon as she’d gotten the research done on one subject she grew bored of it and impulsively switched to another.

“Lena, you need to just settle down on one thing, stop being so all over the place.” Fareeha told her during a late-night library session. Lena flipped her off and continued to scribble notes from her copy of _Harpmann’s_.

Lena sucked the end of her pencil and frowned down at the calculations in front of her. Something was tickling the back of her mind, a kind of nascent understanding of a huge, huge discovery.

“’Reeha,” she said, circling one of her equations, “If – if I substitute _v_ for the value for _p_ that I worked out earlier here, doesn’t that cause the speed to be infinite?”

Fareeha leaned over and scanned her calculations. “No. It’s minus one. You forgot to take a log of that value there.”

“Damn.”

“Did you think you’d calculated the way to make an aircraft go at ‘warp speed’?” Fareeha chuckled.

“Yeh.” Lena whined, crossing out her working and slamming her head down onto the desk. “Ugh, I can’t do this. The numbers are all taunting me. That eight is givin’ me a really shifty look.”

“Now, come on, don’t give up.” Fareeha said at an attempt at compassionate that came out as rather more stern than kind. “I mean – I’m doing my essay on propulsion cooling systems because of…” She blushed, “Because of an imaginary friend I had as a child who had a flying suit. You just have to find the thing that first made you work so hard to get here. What was it?”

Lena thought hard, thought of the roar of planes taking off at Heathrow, the pilots she had so idolised and admired, the gleaming bodies of the aircraft she so longed to fly.

“The Boeing 747.” She muttered, unable to keep the nerdtastic awe from her voice. “The Queen of the Skies. The original Jumbo jet. A classic.”

“Then do your project on the 747.”

“But there’s nothing new to be said about the 747. Everyone’s doing these awesome visionary projects.”

“It’s more important to be passionate than novel.”

“All right, Socrates. But when Professor Winston grades me ‘E’ for ‘Expected Better of You, Lena’, I’m gunna make it my life’s work to interrupt you every time you start snogging Angela.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Fareeha smirked back at her, picking up her phone and beginning to type furiously. Probably texting Angela to organise another gross snogging session. Lena admitted to herself that she was probably very jealous. Why didn’t she have a cute medical student to feed her cake and snuggle?

 

**Fareeha Amari**

(@raptora)

@hipstercratic_oath @luciomusic @sexyshimadasan09 @actualsatanmei Somebody bring baked goods to the library, Squirrel is beginning to slump

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

@raptora Babe you don’t have to use her codename, Lena doesn’t use twitter

 

**Fareeha Amari**

(@raptora)

@hipstercratic_oath Who asked you Cougar?

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

@raptora I am literally just a year and a half older than you

 

**Genjmeister**

(@sexyshimadasan09)

@raptora @hipstercratic_oath do we have to watch you guys play-fight on twitter now as well? B/c if so I will sort out some sick bags

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

@sexyshimadasan09 just because you tried to hit this is first year and I said no you’re still salty Genji #canttouchthis #wastheplaidshirtnotaclue? #yoursisteriscutetho

 

**Genjmeister**

(@sexyshimadasan09)

nah Angie @hipstercratic_oath, he’s my brother Hanzo, don’t let the long hair and delicate feminine features fool you

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

in before Hanzo gets his nipples in a twist over that tweet

 

**Shimada Hanzo**

(@shimadahanzo)

@sexyshimadasan09 your words bring dishonour upon our family Genji! Delete that tweet immediately!

 

**Genjmeister**

(@sexyshimadasan09)

@hipstercratic_oath @shimadahanzo you can practically /hear/ those cold twisted little nipples crying out for salvation

 

**The Icecaps are Meilting**

(@actualsatanmei)

Why are you all my friends again?

 

“Stop smirking at the sexts from your girlfriend and check through that for me.” Lena said sourly, shoving a paragraph of scribbled writing up Fareeha’s nose. She scanned it, finding out it was a rough plan for an essay about the 747.

“I like it. Good mix of technical, historical, societal stuff. Nobody else will be writing an essay like it. I say do it.”

“Right. Okay.” Lena leaned back so far in her chair that the coat hanging from the back skimmed the floor. She rolled her shoulders, cracked her knuckles and did some strange vocal exercises that seemed to have no apparent relevance to the task at hand.

“Get me a sixpack of Red Bull, a blood pressure monitor and a nicotine patch and I’ll show you the Lena Oxton essay-writing method.”

 

-

 

Seven hours later Angela Zeigler was called to the scene of an injury by her girlfriend Fareeha. Lena Oxton was passed out and twitching on the natty carpet of the library, but even in unconsciousness she wore the happy-exhausted smile of somebody who had completed an essay.

After making sure that Lena was not actually dying and putting her in the recovery position, Angela helped Fareeha clear six empty and scrunched up cans of energy drink off the table and tidy up the pieces of scribble-covered paper that littered the floor, ceiling, and chairs. A sheet of calculations had also somehow made its way into the hood of Fareeha’s hoodie. She suspected Lena had scrunched it up and played some basketball when she wasn’t looking.

Fareeha proofread the essay and found to her astonishment that it was incredible. Well, every other word was a spelling mistake and she was pretty sure that ‘velocitudiness’ was not an accepted term, but other than that it was a solid piece of writing. She envied the passion Lena wrote with, interweaving her own experience and the cultural and aeronautical significance of various aspects of the 747 throughout the essay.

Fareeha saved the essay, emailed a copy to herself and to Lena’s own email address, and put all of her things away in her bag. Shouldering it, she and Angela each took Lena under one arm and dragged her back to number thirty-nine, depositing her on her bed and tucking her in.

“Sometimes I feel like her mum.” Fareeha sighed, rubbing the scar on her back where the muscles were protesting at the heavy lifting. “Do you think she actually got blackout drunk by herself on Christmas?”

“It doesn’t seem like something Lena would do.” Angela said slowly, glancing at Lena’s snoring face. “But behind closed doors, who knows what anybody is really like?”

Fareeha’s reply died on her tongue at the sudden anguish that flitted across Angela’s face. Lena turned over and muttered something unintelligible.

“We should leave her to rest.”

They were almost out of the door when Lena said something in her sleep that was clear enough to understand.

“I’m listening.”

Neither of them knew what it meant. They left her to sleep off all that red bull.

It was fair to say that in a very short space of time Angela had had a fairly obvious effect on Fareeha’s interior decorating choices. She point-blank refused to hang out in a bare bedroom with only dumbells and a yoga mat for adornment. Fareeha’s room how had a corkboard affixed to one wall, and they had spent an evening trawling through all their friends’ Facebooks to find good photos of them all together to put up. Now Fareeha’s friends looked down at her when she slept, making silly faces, smiling, that one of the three-legged race on the Athletics bar crawl. A candid Lena had snapped of Fareeha halfway through stuffing Angela’s cherry pie in her mouth, her face covered in jam. That time Genji had let them use one of his prosthetic legs as a rounders bat. Two signed glamour shots of Hana as D.Va, for some reason.

The next addition was a colourful knitted quilt. Angela had discovered this deep in Fareeha’s suitcase in her closet and demanded that it be put on the bed. Fareeha protested, saying that it was garish and childish, but Angela loved it. It had been knitted by the soldiers in Ana’s platoon, each soldier working on one square in their downtime and then sewing them all together. The quality of some of the squares wasn’t great, but Angela insisted that it was the thought that counted.

Now, Angela walked into her room in front of her and plonked herself down on the bed with an exhausted sigh. Fareeha couldn’t help her cheeks reddening at the sight. There was her girlfriend, lying on her bed, skirt riding up just enough to show the curve of her rear. She pushed the improper thoughts from her mind and took the chair.

“Next time Lena decides to do that, tell me?” She said, wriggling until she was comfy on the pillows and taking out her phone. “It’s not healthy to stay up so long on just caffeine. She’ll do herself serious damage.”

“I didn’t exactly get warning that she was basically going to pulse bomb herself,” Fareeha protested, “You know what it’s like with Lena.”

“I do hope she’s not drinking in secret.” Angela said.

“So do I.” Try as she might, she just couldn’t imagine social, outgoing, honest (to the point of bluntness sometimes) Lena sneaking up to her room, on Christmas of all times, and getting blackout drunk. It just didn’t fit.

“Oh, I forgot.” Angela grabbed an envelope from her pocket. “I picked this up on the doorstep when I came in. It’s addressed to you.”

Fareeha opened it curiously and was surprised to find a summons to court. She scanned through it and felt a twinge of pain in her back quite unrelated to supporting Lena.

“They want me as a witness. For what happened on Halloween. They want to charge Jamison and Mako.”

Angela sat up and crossed to the chair without another word, placing her hand on Fareeha’s shoulder. The muscles were tense and taut.

“I’m no lawyer, but you can give your testimony by deposition if you don’t feel up to it in person.”

Fareeha shook her head, the warm hand calming her down. “No. I should go. I have to go. They need to be punished for what they did. But… do you remember me telling you what they were talking about outside the door that night?”

“Something about Junkers.”

Fareeha nodded, wringing her hands in her lap. “I looked it up. The Junkers are a terrorist organisation in Australia who demand dissolution of the ‘corrupt’ government and cutting ties to other countries, which they think are toxic and ruining the culture and future of Australia. Ambassador Jamison-Fawkes was one of the leaders of a committee formed to combat their influence. He’s been fighting them his whole life.”

Angela’s steady hands stroked gently back and forth over Fareeha’s hunched, tense shoulders, leaving small trails of heat where they passed over the skin. She waited patiently, as she always did, to hear the next part.

“Ten years ago, the Junkers staged an attack on the Ambassador’s private house. He was out taking his younger son Mako to the doctors, leaving Jamison with his wife. The press never released the full details, but Jamison has had a prosthetic leg since, and there is no more Mrs. Fawkes-Rutledge.”

Angela’s hands stopped their careful ministrations as one raised to her mouth to stifle a gasp. “Those poor boys.”

“I just can’t make sense of it. I want them to be punished for what they did to me, but if that means sending them back to Australia to be killed by terrorists, I don’t think I can do it. They deserve justice, but… I don’t know if the cost is too high.”

“It’s not black and white.”

“No. I don’t like it.” Fareeha averted her gaze as Angela tried to catch her eye. “I’ve always known what was right and wrong. But since I came to Overwatch, I’m not so sure anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve come at all.”

“Hey. Don’t say that.” Angela slid her hot, dry palm into Fareeha’s and curled her finger’s between hers to lock them together.

“But coming here has meant the accident, and losing my future.”

“Yes, but you’ve also finally broken ground with your mum, you’ve made new friends, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you have a girlfriend sitting here with you.”

A soft kiss to her forehead made Fareeha’s scowl melt away like sand in the wind. She felt her taut muscles relax and her stomach flutter in a way that nobody else could achieve. She leaned back in the chair and felt the soft wool of Angela’s jumper against the back of her neck. Today she smelled like peppermint. It was the most intoxicating of scents to breathe in.

“I must sound so whiney.”

“Not at all. You’ve been through something huge. But sometimes, on the long, cold, dark nights, it’s hard to imagine that the sun will ever rise again.”

“You… you’ve been through something too, haven’t you?”

“Haven’t we all?” Angela said, sadness edging into her voice. “Come here and I’ll tell you.”

Fareeha allowed the hand still locked into Angela’s to lead her over to the bed. Her heart sped from a slow beat to a frantic hammering, but Angela just laid down, brought Fareeha down to lie in front of her, and pulled the lopsided quilt over them both. Fareeha felt the whole of Angela’s body along her spine and down her legs. An arm snaked around her waist and Angela buried her face in the back of her neck.

“I was seven.” She said after a shaky silence. “Coming back from rehearsing for the nativity play at school. I was still in my angel costume with this annoying halo make out of golden tinsel attached to my headband. It was a dark night. An icy, foggy night. My parents were arguing in the car – I don’t remember what it was about. We hit black ice and went off the road into a ditch. It took the ambulance so long to find us. I was so cold. Mother and father wouldn’t respond when I called. My arm, it was trapped, but I’d had my seatbelt on. The paramedics did all they could. The doctors did all they could.”

Angela clutched tighter and tighter as she told the story, her voice quieter and quieter. Fareeha wanted to tell her to stop, not to bring it all up again just to tell her, but something about the shaking hand clutching a fistful of her shirt made her pause.

“I had nobody to hate. No gunman or drunk driver. So I decided to become a doctor, the best doctor in the world, so I can save people. I had an aunt in England, she took me in. I studied hard. I got into Overwatch. Now I’m here, in the embrace of a gorgeous, incredibly resilient girl who I adore. It’s like I said. It’s felt like the coldest and blackest of nights for so long. A couple of years ago the dawn started to come. Now the sun is fully up and everything looks beautiful again.”

Something wet ran down the back of Fareeha’s neck and she realised that Angela was crying. She tried to turn around and be the one to give the hug, but was held in place.

“No. I get to hold you right now.” Angela said sternly.

“All right.” Fareeha threw a pair of socks from her bedside cabinet at the light switch, which clicked off to leave them in darkness save for the lamp. She moved to turn it off, but Angela’s hand grabbed hers and brought it back into her chest.

“I sleep with the light on.”

“All right.” Fareeha said, a feeling so strong she could barely breathe filling her chest. “All right.”


	15. Listen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having to apologise a lot for the lateness of chapters as of late. But I have been distracted recently. I recently acquired a pretty awesome girlfriend and she is being a massive distraction, so please direct your exasperation at her in the comments.  
> This chapter has a content warning for psychological manipulation and mentions of mental illness.  
> Also, I am super, super sorry because as we're getting more towards the climax of this story things have gotta get a hell of a lot worse before they get resolved.

Lena woke with a start, disturbed from her sleep by some vague feeling of panic. She was sweaty despite the chill January weather and the lack of recognisable heating in the house, covers tangled at her feet.

It took a while to relax, heart hammering like a cocaine-addled hamster in her chest. Even when she let out a deep sigh and leaned back against her headboard, the sense of unease sat heavily upon her. Had she been dreaming? If so, she didn’t remember what about, only that it hadn’t been pleasant.

Dawn was just visible as a faint purpling of the starry sky outside, and she accepted that she might as well get up and start her day. A breakfast bar, a run, a shower, and into the Watchpoint in time for her shift. Hana was passed out, today curled in the warm nook below the milk steamer, some of her D.Va makeup still visible as pink smudges on her cheeks. Lena wondered what it must be like, trying to be an international superstar streamer, hold down a job and get a degree. In the end she let Hana sleep on.

Professor Amari entered as usual just after opening and ordered herself a cup of hot water (she now bought her own teabags). She read the newspaper and looked over her lectures for the day in calm silence.

The little electronic doorbell rang and Lena turned her attention to the door, expecting Mr. Lindholm, or perhaps any of her early-rising regulars. She did not anticipate Amélie Lacroix to saunter in, all endless legs and immaculate grey pea coat. Around her neck she wore a red cashmere scarf, on her hands soft leather gloves of a matching colour. The wan morning light made her all the paler, though her nose and the tips of her ears were red from walking across campus in the cold.

Lena had to catch herself suddenly, quite unexpectedly hit by several odd sensations. She admitted to being a passionate girl, free with her emotions, but she was simple in her reactions. Happy, sad. Excited, bored. Which was why it was all the stranger that the sight of Amélie gave her one, vast stormy sort of feeling that she couldn’t isolate individual emotions from.

“Coffee. Black.” Amélie said at the counter. Lena stared. Amélie had never, ever come into the Watchpoint before when she’d been here. At all. Why suddenly start now, especially at the arsecrack of dawn on a Monday?

Tongue-tied, Lena nodded and brewed the coffee, accepting a handful of coins in exchange. The cup shook on its saucer in her hands. Why was she shaking?

“Lost for words, Lena?” Asked Amélie. Lena’s name rolled off her tongue like a taunt, and Lena couldn’t remember her ever having used it before. Those amber eyes stared at her unblinkingly, making her palms sweat, her fingers twitch, her teeth clamp down on her bottom lip against her will. It was as if her mind had ground to a halt, unrecognisable images and sensations all competing for her attention. The sense of unease from her dreams rose to a scream, haunting her, rattling around inside her skull.

“I – enjoy your drink.” Lena ducked away and practically threw herself into the small staff room, closing the door behind her and collapsing against it. When she chanced a peek through the porthole window, she saw Amélie sitting in one of the booths with her coffee, legs crossed, eyes trained on the door. Their eyes met again and Lena swore her heart stopped for a few seconds.

_Be brave you daft coot_ , she tried to tell herself, _she’s just a girl. Bit of a weird girl. But why do I suddenly feel like this? Like… like I’m terrified of her? Sure, Amélie isn’t exactly warm and cuddly. But she’s never done anything bad to you. Has she?_

She strained her memory for anything that would cause her to suddenly feel this way. Amélie didn’t exactly feature heavily in her day-to-day life. There was the incident, and that time at the hospital. Amélie had been sinister, hazy, connected to all those wires. But they’d never touched. They’d never had a fight or anything. Amélie did not have Lena’s contact details, so she hadn’t done anything over social media. If all of that was true, then why did Lena feel somehow… violated by this woman?

Her courage came back to her and she stood up, dusted herself off and pushed back into the Watchpoint. Professor Amari paid her no attention, dipping a teabag in and out of her cup while reading a complicated-looking research paper. But Amélie… Amélie’s eyes did not flicker away, even for an instant.

“The quality of the coffee here has been rather overstated.” Amélie said offhandedly, running a long, dextrous finger around the rim of the cup. “And the ‘friendly, helpful’ staff… well…”

She gestured to Lena, still slightly shaky, and to where Hana was curled up and snoring quietly underneath the milk steamer.

“You wanna file a complaint?” Lena asked, surprising herself with the anger in her voice. If Amélie was just here to needle at her, to insult her…

To her surprise, Amélie shook her head with a small smile. She motioned her hand that Lena sit opposite her in the booth. Lena sat, making sure she had clocked Professor Amari not to far away. If Amélie did or said anything really bad, Professor Amari was sure to hear it.

“Are you well?” Amélie asked.

Lena could think of a hundred million answers that ranged between ‘go fuck yourself’ and ‘go fuck me’, but instead settled with the old classic: “Fine, I guess.”

“I’ve seen you through the window. Your sleep seems disturbed.”

“Pretty creepy that you’ve been watching me sleep, mate.”

“Pretty hard to ignore you writhing around in bed when I am trying to read peacefully at my windowsill.”

“Go read in the library then. I’m just fine. Why’re you so interested in me suddenly, anyway?”

“Because you’re interesting. I said so before.”

_That you did_ , Lena thought, _but I’m surprised you remember that you said it. Surprised and… unnerved._

“Well I’m not interested in being interesting. To you, I mean.”

Amélie’s face was a perfectly sculpted mask, pale skin immaculately contoured, heavy eye makeup serving only to make those disconcerting amber eyes all the more noticeable. Lena squirmed in her seat, regretting making eye contact. A small smile curled the edge of her plump lips, painted deep plum with lipstick.

“That is a shame.”

“Yeh?”

“Because I was hoping to ask you on a second date.”

The silence of the Watchpoint stretched infinitely between them. Lena’s heart spasmed in her chest, sending bloody rushing up to her cheeks and down to the pit of her stomach. Wh- what? What had Amélie just said? She should’ve been more vigorous clearing out her ears with a Q-tip that morning.

“S- S- Second?” She managed to splutter.

“Is this not a first? Two people having coffee together?”

“No! It absolutely is not! How can you even – this is false pretences! I didn’t even know you were – you had a – I – what the fuck?”

Amélie hid an urbane little chuckled behind her hand. “Lena Oxton is cute when flustered.”

“I’ll show you flustered, you – you – am I in the twilight zone?”

“I should hope not.” Amélie sipped her coffee, leaning back, legs crossed like she knew exactly what she was doing and exactly the effect it was having on the girl opposite her. “So you will meet me by the entrance to the landscape garden this Saturday morning at ten. Dress warm.”

“I’m not agreeing to this.”

“Ouch. I’m wounded. Rejection is a cruel mistress.” The sarcasm was thick and glutinous on Amélie’s tongue. She knew that Lena would turn up. And, worse, she knew that Lena knew that she knew that Lena would turn up. If that makes sense. Amélie was in control. She had completely blindsided Lena, thrown her off balance.

“Have a good day.”

Amélie left the coffee half-finished and stood up, pulling her gloves onto her hands and throwing her scarf back around her neck. Lena sat at the booth and watched her slink out, having lost complete control of her axial skeleton. What had just – what in the – holy milk bottle-tops, had she -?

“She’ll eat you alive.”

Lena jumped, only to see Hana now awake, the top of her head peeking over the counter.

“Couldn’t you have just pretended to be asleep and live-tweeted the whole thing? So I could have died of embarrassment later?”

Hana shook her head and managed a sleepy version of her shit-eating grin. “You gonna go meet her, then?”

“Of course not.” Lena crossed her arms. If anything, the feeling of unease she’d been struggling with all morning had only intensified. She was smart enough to tell when her own body and mind were sending her danger signals. But why? She just had no justification for the way she was feeling.

“Oh, you hella are. Have you _seen_ that girl? She’s a whole heap of sexy. Dangerous. That, uh, ‘femme fatale’ kinda vibe. She could choke you out and you’d love it.”

Professor Amari gave a very noticeable cough from the corner. Hana blushed, but not that much.

“Hana!”

“What? Just sayin’. What’ve you got to lose?”

_Probably my dignity_ , Lena thought. Hana didn’t seem to have the same instinct for self-preservation that she did. Or maybe Hana was just one of these people who like to stoke the fires of chaos. Either way, a nineteen-year-old pro gamer fuelled mainly by obsession and doritos who hasn’t gotten a healthy night’s sleep in four years probably doesn’t have the best judgement when it comes to relationships.

Hana was not put off by Lena’s huffy silence. “I mean, I wouldn’t’ve guessed that she was into girls. But it takes all sorts, I guess. Didn’t you say something – something about her having a boyfriend?”

“She’s got photos of a guy I’m pretty sure must be her boyfriend.”

“Is, or was?”

“Dunno mate.”

“Hmmm.” Hana stroked her chin. “Right. I’m on the case. I’ve got a big essay in for Friday but when I’ve got a sec I’ll see what I can dig up about her on the net. Social media pages and the like. If it’s there, I can see it, maybe give you a better clue about her intentions. And if it’s all password-protected – well, I’ve got a gal I can call about that.”

“I do not want to know anything about whatever illegal stuff you’re into, Hana.”

“It’s not technically illegal if you do it through a server in Venezuela.”

The bell chimed and a group of students came in, yawning and red-faced from the cold in their hats and coats. Lena took Amélie’s unfinished coffee and hopped back over the counter. She took orders and served the customers, but couldn’t keep her head screwed on straight. It made no sense. Sure, Amélie was – well, she was gorgeous, there was no denying that. But she was distant. Cold. When last they’d had any one-on-one time, Lena had gotten the distinct impression that Amélie disliked her a great deal. But then why –

She gave an actual audible groan of frustration, something playing at the very edge of her mind. She had a feeling that she knew something. That there was more to this story, that there was an obvious reason that Amélie wanted to get close to her. But buggered if she could remember what it was.

 

-0-

 

Amélie waited by the entrance to the university landscape garden in the chill morning air. She had her hands in her pockets, the left one shaking nervously, the right one clutched around her phone.

 

_From: Thadeas Griffe_

_Be brave, Amélie. I’m here for you._

_From: Amélie Lacroix_

_I don’t think I can. This can’t be right._

_From: Thadeas Griffe_

_It has to be done. For your sake. For your health. I believe in you, darling._

**The Previous Sunday Evening**

 

Amélie’s room was dark, as always. Bright lights made her nervous, anxious, full of fear that somebody would recognise her. Bright lights felt like the spotlights of police helicopters.

Across the road she could see flashes of Lena Oxton wriggling around in bed, the occasional sight of her elbows sticking out or her messy hair visible through the window. The girl’s sleep was being disturbed by the same thing that was keeping Amélie awake.

_Am I going mad?_

She stared down at the dog-eared photograph from the beach. Gérard’s grinning face looked back at her, loving, innocent, accusatory. He was dead, and Amélie was beginning to discover terrible truths about herself that might be connected to his fate.

She was sure that something was wrong with her. There were short patches of time she couldn’t remember. Flashes of memory that were not her own. Urges – the urges! – that could not, should not belong to her.

She was not a dramatic girl. Not a burst-into-tears kind of child, not a gossip or a worry-wart. But more and more often she found herself using language not out of place in a pretentious novel to describe the way she was feeling.

A pretty shell hiding a terrible monster within.

Possessed.

Schizophrenic.

Out of control.

The night out in Numbani. There had been a boy. What had happened to the boy? Why hadn’t she remembered him until she saw his face on a poster on the medical school noticeboard: _Student assaulted in Numbani on October 3 rd. Any information invaluable. Contact campus security. _She knew that face. Why? How? And why didn’t she remember?

Then there was the incident and the hospital stay afterwards. She’d written it off as the anaesthetic and the painkillers. A morphine haze. But there were bits missing there too, snatches of conversation she heard herself say as though through a thick pane of glass. Words she would never have chosen herself.

Lena sitting on her bed, smiling her dopey smile. The sensation of warmth spreading outwards from the centre of her chest, sinking into a hot bath after years of being frozen to the core. Affection. She’d been so disbelieving that this girl, this sparky, energetic, loving girl had come over to keep her company. And then, what? Then panic. Then the cold-sweat feeling of slipping backwards through tar. Waking up to blood on her carpet and belts on the floor. Aching muscles from exercise she had no recollection of doing.

She felt as though she was fading away. That it had been so long since she had been the Amélie in this picture, smiling, in love, surrounded by family. They had been taken away from her, one by one, stars winking out in the sky until she was all dark and cold. She wasn’t that girl any more, and the girl she was becoming was weak. Fabric in tatters, fraying at the seams, some other thing in her mind growing and feeding on her doubt and her fear.

Sometimes she caught herself saying things that she did not mean. Nasty things. Manipulative things. Words designed not to tease – she had been a good-natured teaser before – but to mock, to jeer. This new person she was turning into was nasty. This new person was violent. This new person was taking over.

She needed help, and there was one person she knew she could rely on to listen to her concerns. Dr. Griffe had been with her through her whole life, a listening ear, and gentle, kind man. And he was a psychiatrist. If this truly was some kind of mental illness, she was sure he could recognise it. He could adjust her medications to accommodate. He would save her.

But she had been putting it off and off. Amélie wasn’t quite sure why. She trusted Dr. Griffe absolutely, so why was she almost… scared of talking to him about this? Perhaps she didn’t want to disappoint him. He always told her that she was his star case, his greatest success. Telling him would be like admitting that even after all the help he had given her, she was still weak, still broken.

Her finger hovered over the Skype call button for what seemed like days. In the end, it was the movement in the corner of her eye that made her press it. The sight of somebody so strong, so full of life struggling in her dreams across the street spurred her into action.

“ _Allo, Amélie?”_ He answered within a couple of rings, as he always did.

“ _Docteur Griffe. Bonsoir. I think I need to talk to you about something_.”

“ _I am here for you always, my dear_.”

She hesitated, unsure of the best way to phrase it.

“ _Thadeas. You’re a psychiatrist. Can you… can I ask you about the symptoms of schizophrenia?”_

There was a surprised pause as the familiar clean-shaven face on the screen displayed obvious shock. “ _Schizophrenia?_ ”

“ _I’ve been experiencing some unfamiliar feelings. Sensations. Thoughts. I’m worried that I’m going mad, Dr. Griffe_.”

“ _Tell me everything_.”

And so Amélie did. She poured out her heart to him, all her worries and fears. As she talked, knots she hadn’t even been aware of her in stomach and her muscles began to loosen. He listened so closely, so actively. Dr. Griffe’s face, the wood-panelled interior of his office, it all reminded her so much of home. She felt all the more keenly the fact that she hadn’t been able to go home for the holidays.

When she had finished, half in tears, half weak-kneed with relief, he sat back in his chair and interlaced his fingers in thought.

“ _You mentioned this girl several times. Lena_.”

“ _Did I?”_ Amélie blinked. Honestly, she’d not really been paying attention to what she’d been saying, rather vomiting out everything that was preying on her mind.

“ _Many of your – of these ‘blackouts’ you’re describing seem to involve her. You had an argument with her at this nightclub. You saw her at the hospital. And this most recent one, at Christmas, you said she came over to your room, but you don’t remember anything after that.”_

Amélie hadn’t thought about it like that. “ _I suppose that’s true_.”

“ _As a scientist yourself, Amélie, you know that correlation does not equal causation. But it is a very convenient co-incidence that this girl is here every time you have a blackout_.”

“ _She has nothing to do with this_!” Amélie said before she could stop herself. What was he insinuating? That Lena was somehow doing something to her to bring this on? That Lena – beautiful, vibrant, smiling Lena – was capable of this kind of manipulation and deception? Nonsense!

“ _Amélie, I am not accusing her. You harbour great affection for her and it does you credit. But do not let it blind you. Three times out of three is not something to ignore._ ”

“ _I’m telling you, Thadeas, she’s not that sort of person. And what motivation would she have? She’s kind. She has friends who love her and she loves back. She is so happy. Why would she need to do something like this?”_

Dr. Griffe gave a small chuckle, as if laughing at an in-joke she did not understand. “ _The kindest of people have the blackest of hearts, Amélie. You are too trusting. Too naïve, still. The world is out to hurt you, I have told you many times.”_

He was wrong. Lena would never hurt her, never intentionally. She was pure-hearted and brave.

“ _Your defense of her is a little concerning, Amélie.” Dr. Griffe said slowly, brow furrowed. “Your affection – well, the language you used was more reverential than anything else – for her is clouding your judgement.”_

“ _I don’t_ revere _her_.”

“ _That is not the impression I got_.” Dr. Griffe shook his head, face scrunched in thought. One leg bounced up and down just in view under his desk, his fingers drumming together at the tips. “ _Do you feel brave_?”

She’d never felt anything further from brave in her whole life. “ _No_.”

“ _Can you be brave for me_?”

“ _That – that depends, docteur. What do you want me to do?_ ”

“ _We must find out if it is something this Lena girl is doing that is affecting you in the ways you have described. I am not going to jump to the conclusion that you have some kind of hitherto unnoticed and non-symptomatic mental health problem. That would be doing you a disservice. But if something is happening, Amélie, we need to find out what it is. I am hundreds of miles away. So you will have to take responsibility for this_.”

Amélie was still confused. What exactly was he getting at? Her worries much have shown on her face, because Dr. Griffe began speaking again.

“ _Find a way to get alone with her. You say she is gay? Ask her on a date. Somewhere out of the way. Private. Keep your phone on you, and call me, but keep it in your pocket so I can hear. If she truly is doing something to you, I will be there to find out even if you are incapacitated, like you spoke about with these ‘blackouts’.”_

_“Like a policeman wearing a wire_.”

“ _Exactly. We will have to be a little low-tech about it, but the idea is the same_.”

“ _I don’t like this, Thadeas_.”

“ _But you agree it must be done. You have done right by coming to me and seeking help for these new symptoms. I am suggesting action to help resolve the problem. I am a doctor – we examine, diagnose, and treat. This is just the same process. At some point, you will have to take responsibility for your health_.”

Nothing about this sat well with Amélie, but she nodded. Dr. Griffe hung up, and as he did so the video image on the screen froze with him reaching across his desk for one of his books. Which one, Amélie could not see.

She glanced across the street again. Lena would be up at the crack of dawn for her shift at the awful coffee shop in the Atlas building. Amélie might as well corner her there while it was still quiet and begin Dr. Griffe’s strange plan. She had the feeling she’d need that coffee anyway. Sleep would not come to her tonight.

 

**Present**

 

“You came.”

“Yeh. Only to – to prove I’m not a wuss.”

Lena Oxton approached the archway entrance to the campus landscape gardens like every step she took made her more embarrassed. She was wearing that ratty old charity shop bomber jacket again, zipped up all the way to a white scarf around her neck. Her hair, though no doubt still very messy, was hidden under a maroon beanie with a ridiculous little pom-pom on the top. Black jeans and dirty trainers completed the look of somebody who has spent hours agonising about what they’re going to wear and ending up just wearing what they wear every single day anyway.

Amélie tapped her thumb on the call button and felt the phone vibrate a few times with the silenced dial tones, then connect to Dr. Griffe.

“Shall we walk?”

“Er, sure. Who plans an outdoor date in bloody January, though? I’m freezing my socks off!”

Amélie looked down at Lena’s mismatched socks in confusion.

“It’s a saying. British slang. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.” Amélie said, smiling. Her heart gave a weak kind of flutter in her chest, from nervousness or affection she couldn’t be sure. “I think it is… cute.”

What turned out to be cuter was Lena’s bright red blush at that statement. She buried her face in her scarf and walked rather faster than was absolutely necessary through the archway into the first part of the gardens, a display of herb gardens and brightly-coloured winter lichens.

“So, I, er, was wondering,” she said into the ground, “I mean, this is kind of a change of heart for you, isn’t it? I was under the impression that you hated my guts.”

“I do, in a way. I suppose I am a little envious of you. Lena Oxton, full of health and energy, with friends from every corner of campus. I admit to not being able to handle jealousy well.”

“Eh? Jealous? No way. You could have all the friends you want! I’m just – I’m just a silly blighter. I’m pretty useless actually. Behind on my work, behind on my studies and my job and the Athletics stuff.”

“Well, I can get behind your behind.”

Lena Oxton then proceeded to choke on the air in her own mouth and had to grab a stone birdbath for support. She could not meet Amélie’s eyes. Was this flirting? Was this girl seriously flirting with her?

“Did I say something?”

“No. Nope. Nothing. I just had an, er, muscle cramp.”

“Of course.”

Amélie found to her surprise that she was enjoying herself. She’d almost forgotten the phone in her pocket, or Dr. Griffe’s theory that Lena had something to do with her blackouts.

“Ooh, a hedge maze!” Lena jumped and sprinted over to the entrance between two tall evergreen hedges that led into a dark maze. “I love these. I used to go to the one in Hampton Court when I was a kid, as a treat. Got lost loads, but hey-ho.”

Lena beckoned her in and Amélie felt keenly the sense of danger return. She should absolutely not enter an abandoned, dark, enclosed maze with a girl who might somehow be causing her blackouts. But Dr. Griffe had told her to get alone with Lena, hadn’t he? And he was listening on the phone. This might be the best chance she had to find out what was going on.

She followed Lena into the maze.

Sound seemed to be dampened between the deep green hedges. It was colder here too, out of the morning sun that shone down on the campus. Amélie caught snatches of Lena laughing, the flash of her hat or her jacket rounding a corner.

“Lena, please, wait for me.” Amélie panted, losing her breath trying to keep up. She panicked for a moment thinking Lena had left her alone, but soon she reappeared from a completely different path than she’d left by, a look of concern on her face.

“Sorry. I forgot. I’ll go slow.”

“You don’t need to go slow. Just, not that fast.”

“Understood, ma’am.” Lena gave her a cute little salute and fell into step in front of her as they explored the maze. Occasionally they would find a dead end, or a bench, a statue, or once an exquisite topiary of a rearing bear that was oddly lifelike and nearly frightened the wits out of Lena when she turned the corner and bumped right into it.

And still nothing bad had happened. Amélie’s faith in Dr. Griffe’s theory was slipping away with every second that Lena smiled, or laughed, or said something dorky. In a way, Lena reminded her of Gérard. Always smiling, always just radiating energy, open for the taking and given with no expectation of anything in return.

“Amélie.” She heard the voice of Dr. Griffe in her pocket.

“What was that?” Lena turned, looking around for the source of the unknown voice. “Hey, maybe someone else is in with us. That’s spooky.”

“Listen to my voice. Listen carefully. Are you listening?”

Lena and Amélie both froze next to an iced-over water feature. A thrill of terror pierced Amélie’s brain at the anguish that spread like infection across Lena’s face.

“What – what’s that?”

Amélie tried to fumble in her pocket, but her fingers were useless, frozen, immovable claws that couldn’t grip the phone or press the touch screen. Her skin was ice cold. The phone did not recognise her touch as human.

“Are you listening?”

The feeling came again, the feeling of being booted up, of vast amounts of sensation and information dredged up from just below the surface. Amélie’s hands dropped the phone and went to grip her head. She could feel it again. The dreadful calm, like death, stealing over her mind and body, robbing her of control.

“No!” She managed to croak, but her words did nothing.

“Are you listening?”

What broke her was Lena’s voice. Low, unsure, conflicted.

“I’m… I’m listening.”

 

-0-

 

Hana Song sat in the library after her shift in the Watchpoint on Saturday, desperately trying to cajole her brain into doing her now overdue essay. She had to set everything up for her Saturday Stream soon, but she’d already had one extension and there was no way her tutor would let her have another.

One hand expertly tip-tapped at her laptop, her perpetual distraction. She felt like there was something else she should be doing. Something she said she’d do by now.

That was it! Lena’s mysterious lady-suitor! She’d promised she would check her out online before their date. But that would be around now, wouldn’t it? Hana had forgotten the exact time.

She googled the name. Amélie Lacroix, and checked the search results. The first one was a newspaper article translated from a French Local Paper.

 

_MEMORIAL HELD AT GRAVE OF LOCAL BOY ON ANNIVERSARY OF MURDER_

 

Hana’s eyes scanned it quickly. She dropped her pencil in horror.

Shit. She had to find Lena right now.


	16. Duality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a big notes. I'm so sorry for the lateness of this (to everybody who has been messaging me on Tumblr asking also...) but I've had a killer couple of weeks.   
> I'd like to thank my local hospital's Accident and Emergency department for filling me with morphine (and treating me, but mainly the morphine) after I fell into a pothole in the road and tore half the ligaments in my foot apart.   
> I'd like to thank Oxford University for having me for a gruelling 2-day interview to read English, which has just ended.   
> I'd also like to thank my amazing girlfriend for distracting me loads and loads from the writing I was meant to be doing in any second of free time I've had. So you guys can all be angry at her. Bah.  
> I'm getting on with writing this and the competition reward for violetnovice (haven't forgotten you! Just super busy!) now though. I'm signed off work until next Monday so fingers crossed I'll have some time. Thanks again for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos. We're getting past another big dollop of drama after this chapter and getting back to something a little lighter next time.

Hana clutched at the raised, red welt on the side of her face and backed herself into the wall.

 

-0-

 

“ _Amelie, darling, make the girl sit down.”_

She wanted to say no. Wanted to fight the overwhelming presence of Widowmaker growing in her mind, taking over her senses. As if the frigid pane of ice atop a great lake had been pierced, she remembered. Remembered the reason she felt insane. Remembered the twisted persona inside of her. Remembered what Dr. Giffe had done. Was doing.

“ _Amélie, stop this foolishness.”_

_“You… why…”_

A great sigh heaved from the phone in her hand. “ _Come now. You’re not usually this slow, my dear. Just drift off now. Be a good girl for me.”_

The sound of his voice was like a fishhook to her brain, painfully dragging it this way and that. His smooth, soporific tone lulled her into a kind of trance that was too blissful to ignore. All her doubts, her darkness, her fear just melted away as Widowmaker stole over her.

“ _She’s just a child, Docteur_.” It was still Amélie’s voice, but no longer Amélie. And it was uncharacteristically snappy now, acidic, spat down the phone.

“ _Just a child? What do you care, Widowmaker?”_

“ _I – I don’t care_.”

“ _Then why question me_?”

Widowmaker didn’t know. She shouldn’t have. Dr. Griffe was her creator, her master, the greatest authority and god in her life. That was how he had made her, after all. She had been forged from the molten fear in a young, fragile Amélie’s mind, a sharpened blade designed to kill. For what reason, she did not know. She had been taught not to ask. She had been made not to ask. Whatever this new sensation of uncertainty was, it was incredibly perplexing and painful for her.

She decided, for the first time, to lie to him.

“ _I simply wondered at what use she is to you_.”

“ _Useful is a relative term. As I have told you before – not that you have any particular need of knowing – my research previously indicated that it is only possible to achieve something such as you over many painstaking years of subtle and ongoing therapy. But this girl has taken to the hypnotic state so easily. So readily. I wonder why that is. Perhaps it is because she, as you have mentioned, is so open and trusting. I had thought to prey upon the weaknesses of a broken, introverted young girl. You are the only one of three that worked_.”

There was only crackling silence from the other end of the phone as the doctor became lost briefly in his own musings. “ _This Lena Oxton presents new data. A new challenge. I should much like to break her_.”

She wasn’t entirely sure why it happened, but Widowmaker’s hand shook so much that the phone dropped onto the gravel-strewn floor.

“ _Widowmaker?_ ” Griffe’s voice barked from the ground. “ _What was that_?”

“ _Nothing_.” She picked the phone back up, taking several breaths to calm herself. Her hear palpitated irritatingly in her chest. Something was very wrong, and a flickered glance over to Lena only made things worse.

The girl sat placidly with a mildly confused expression on her face, perching on the edge of the water fountain. Though she had not interrupted the conversation, she kept moving her lips vaguely to whisper ‘I’m listening’. Something about seeing a Lena this deflated, this lost and listless, made Widowmaker sick. Or maybe Amélie. There was no longer any denying that the line between the two of them was becoming blurred.

“ _Hold the phone to her_.” Griffe said, snapping out of his reverie.

Amélie fought Widowmaker for every inch. **_Don’t do this to her, of all people_** , Amélie was pleading from deep down inside Widowmaker’s consciousness. **_I was tricked into bringing her here. He’s manipulating us. Please. Please, don’t hurt her. She’s everything good about being human_** _._

But Griffe began to weave his web of words, his smooth voice filling the space around the fountain and disappearing into the high hedges, never to leave this place. Lena listened and nodded occaisionally. Every word he said was like a dagger to Widowmaker’s chest. Jealousy burned inside of her. It was as though she had acid reflux of the brain, if that was a thing.

There was a strange duality to her now. Widowmaker was present and in control, called into life by Griffe’s words, increasingly close to the surface these days. But Amélie wasn’t far away either, fighting tooth and nail to be heard, fuming and raging as Griffe’s deception was revealed.

**_You’ll just forget again_** , Widowmaker reminded her, **_like all the other times. He won’t end the session without making you forget. He’s too smart not to do that._**

**_How can you defend him?_** Amélie spat at her.

**_He made me thus. The question is, how can you? Which of us does he have more truly in his grasp? I am a thing made by him from you. I exist to kill, to transgress the most sacred and basic moral laws of humanity. I am a monster Griffe created to please his own ego. But you, Amélie. You are a scared little girl who runs back to him every time you feel afraid. Of your own free will. I am an uncontrollable attack dog on a leash, but you are a loyal puppy, housebroken and trained and aching for his approval._ **

**_That’s not true. You’re an evil, twisted thing trying to goad me. You’re his servant. But you feel so jealous of Lena. You’re the one desperate for approval_ ** _._

They both realised it at the same time, and in that moment, Amélie and Widowmaker were truly the same person.

**_You’re desperate for love_** _,_ each thought about the other.

And each immediately denied it to the other, a mental cacophony of argument that sent Amélie’s body haywire. The phone fell again, into Lena’s lap.

“ _Widowmaker_!” Griffe raged. “ _What is wrong with you_?”

“ _Nothing_.” She said again, despite everything being so very wrong. She picked up the phone, her frozen fingers brushing against the warm fabric of Lena’s jeans. The heat made her shudder. It made everything too real.

He continued to talk at Lena, all words both Amélie and Widowmaker recognised too well. _Submit. Accept. Within. Innermost thoughts, desires. Let go. Submit. Accept. Are you listening?_

**_You could stop it_** _._ Amélie entreatied. **_Just throw the phone away. Stop him_** _._

Widowmaker shook her head at nobody in particular considering she was talking to herself inside her own head. **_Sooner or later I’d fade away. With the adrenaline gone, or without him maintaining the hypnotised state. And when I go, I take all your memories from induction onwards with me. You’d forget, you’d run back to Griffe and the whole cycle would repeat._**

**_Leave a message for me. Before you go._ **

**_How?_ **

**_On the phone._ **

**_The phone that you propose I throw into the fountain?_ **

**_Oh. Good point. On paper. We’ll take Lena home. Look after her, and use some paper of hers to write a note._ **

**_Do we have time?_** Widowmaker wondered. She usually started fading away as soon as the kill was complete or the threat was lessened – not that she’d managed to kill many people yet.

**_Does that mean you’re considering it?_** Amélie asked, hope thrumming inside their chest like a crack-addled bee orgy.

Widowmaker considered it, all right. The very idea was tearing her apart. To go against her master’s wish and stop him hypnotising Lena would be bad. But he didn’t need Lena, not when he had Widowmaker. She was his masterpiece. He shouldn’t even think – shouldn’t even want to – he was _hers_!

She could pass it off as an accident. Lena’s fault. She fought back. She knocked the phone into the fountain. Then Griffe would see that Lena was fundamentally unsuitable. Griffe would see that Widowmaker was his best and only daughter.

Daughter? The word struck her as odd. It wasn’t what she had wanted to use.

Griffe is not my father!” Amélie’s voice punctured through Widowmaker’s control, becoming real, a choked outburst. It took Widowmaker by surprise and stole the air from her lungs. With that second of freedom Amélie threw the phone down into the fountain, where it splashed into the water and smashed into pieces against the bottom.

Lena blinked and tried to stumble to her feet, but Amélie grabbed her under the arm and pulled her away immediately, as if the water itself could be somehow polluted by the phone’s presence. Her heart pounded dysrythmically, joints ice-cold and sluggish as she dragged Lena out of that wretched hedge-maze. Widowmaker turned the corner, but soon after Amélie left through the archway. It was Widowmaker who glared at a nosy student who looked at them as they passed but Amélie who fumbled in Lena’s jacket pocket for her house keys. They took turns getting out of breath trying to lug Lena, who was dazed as though drunk, up three flights of stairs to her room.

Once inside Amélie laid her down once more upon her bed. She felt awful, sick, confused, but it was her fault that this had happened to Lena. Getting mixed up with Amélie had caused all of this. Lena didn’t deserve this. Lena was a creature of light and laughter. Surely there was no dark shadow behind her eyes for Griffe to twist into a killer? No Widowmaker could come from Lena. Lena was good. Lena was kind and trusting and all the things Amélie wished she could still be.

_You like her_ , Widowmaker observed.

“I admire her.” Amélie corrected begrudgingly.

_No. You have great affection for her. You are a cold little thing, but she makes you feel… warm._

“Quiet.” Amélie muttered, pulling the rumpled covers over Lena. This was the second time she had left her like this, half-hypnotised, deceived. It didn’t sit well.

She remembered just in time. The note. She had to write a note to herself. She couldn’t forget. Not again.

Lena had a pad of paper and a messy pencilcase on her desk, half-hidden amongst the detritus that littered all of the surfaces in here. Amélie took a pen and sat at the desk, nib of the pen pressing into the blank page in front of her.

The door flew open.

WIdowmaker seamlessly took over, dropping the pad of paper and grasping the pen like a weapon. This was a threat. She could deal with threats. That was what she was for.

“Get the hell away from her!” Hana Song gasped, clutching a stitch in her side. She looked mad, dishevelled and heaving from running.

“Pardon me?” She replied icily.

“You – I – gardens – phone?” She was too puffed out from running (or, perhaps, Widowmaker thought, too stupid and addled by energy drink) to properly form a sentence.

“You will have to speak sense if I am to reply.”

“What did you do to Lena?” Hana demanded, crossing to Lena’s bedside to check on the form within it. Lena had fallen out of the hypnotic state into its next stage, a deep sleep. She twitched slightly ever so often and murmured nonsense into the air.

“Nothing.” After all, it was Griffe who had done all the doing.

“Lena? Hey, Lena, wake up! Did you drug her? Was it GHB? What were you planning to do when you got her alone, eh?”

Lena stirred and gave a grunting snore. “Wassat?”

“Lena, what has she done to you?”

“Gerroff, Hana, I’m knackered… I just wanna sleep…”

Lena rolled over and started snoring again.

“Hey! Hey, explain it to me, Amélie Lacroix, what you were doing with her here, asleep, at your mercy?”

Widowmaker told the lie easier than the truth. “Lena turned up to our date after staying up all night playing video games. She was rather dull company for it, so I said I would not be offended if she wanted to get some sleep and reschedule.”

“And you ended up in her room with her alone?”

“Evidently.”

Hana crossed her arms angrily over her chest but appeared to deflate slightly, having not come across the gruesome sight of a murder-in-progress that her fairly wild imagination had been expecting.

“I don’t like this.”

“I wasn’t aware that your whim was law around here.”

Hana ground her teeth at the sass she was getting from this uppity little fresher. She wasn’t quite out of steam yet.

“You’re awfully rude for somebody with so much to hide.”

Amélie visibly stiffened. The look of a spooked animal came over her face, amber eyes glinting with veiled threat. “Pardon?”

“Well, I get you. I mean, if I’d fled France after being on trial for my boyfriend’s mysterious murder, I’d keep it under wraps too.”

_Smack._

Hana stumbled back with a cry.

“Don’t gossip about things you don’t understand, girl.” Widowmaker snarled at her, palm stinging. How dare this vapid little goblin mention Gérard? How dare she have snooped into Amélie’s life?

“I’m older than you, don’t treat me like a child!”

“I’ll treat you like a child if you continue to behave like one. Don’t meddle with this. Lena is here, and safe, if a little sleepy. I have done nothing to her. You read one news article and think you know what happened to Gérard? You dare accuse me?”

“I- I didn’t –”

But Amélie was coming towards her, looking more like a predatory animal than anything else. Rage was etched into her features. It was strange to think that Amélie, cool, composed, unconcerned Amélie could wear a face like this.

Hana clutched at the raised, red welt on the side of her face and backed herself into the wall. But still Amélie came at her. She should call the police. Blow a whistle or something. Shout. Scream. Surely one of Lena’s housemates must be in, it was Saturday lunchtime. Yet for some reason she couldn’t.

One of Amélie’s hands came up to press against the wall by Hana’s head, bringing them close. As her jumper rode up Hana saw the lattice of scars from the broken window, faded to ugly raised pink lines criss-crossing the skin now.

This close Hana could see every elegant curve of Amélie’s pale face, the slight blue tinge to her oxygen-starved lips, clever amber eyes narrowed and boring into her soul. Suddenly and unexpectedly given the situation she could see what made Amélie gorgeous. Irresistable. What had Lena’s cheeks blushing at the very thought.

Hana needed to have a long hard look at herself when she got home. If she got home, that is. If Amélie didn’t chop her up with a battleaxe and hide her body parts in the library’s book return bins.

“Do you understand, Hana?” Amélie breathed in her face, the arm blocking her escape. “Do you understand the importance of checking your facts before you gossip yourself into a mess?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then scuttle back to your computer. And I’ll know if you get chatty about this. Believe me on that.”

The arm was lifted away and for once, Hana Song did the sensible thing and bolted. Her first thought was to call Lúcio, and Zarya, and maybe Genji too. Get everybody together and mount a retaliation against Amélie. But then, slowly, the cogs in her brain began to grind. Amélie was friends with Angela, who had a lot of influence over Genji and Zarya. Lúcio might help her, but he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise his music and his campaigns. She’d do better to just keep quiet for now. And she had that essay to finish, and her stream tonight! Holy shit, she’d wasted so much time!

Hang on, she told herself, concentrate on your friend and colleague Lena. You just left her with Amélie, alone, in a room that was probably now locked. Amélie who had proven herself capable of violence – the stinging slap-mark on Hana’s cheek proved that – and who had gone off into a towering rage when Hana had accused her of killing her boyfriend. She could still be dangerous. She could smother Lena with a pillow and be off down the fire escape in five minutes.

But, then, Hana would know exactly who’d been in that room with Lena. Hana was a witness. And if Amélie was smart – which Hana guessed she was, as a med student – she wouldn’t do anything. Knowing that Hana knew everything. Perhaps Hana had protected Lena just by being there to see the situation.

Conflicted and running a hundred scenarios about what could be happening in Lena’s room right now, she trudged back to the library. Her face hurt, and she didn’t think all the concealer in the world would hide the red welt from the beady eyes of her viewers. And she was still only halfway through her essay, which was due so soon. She groaned and plonked herself back down on her seat, slamming her face against the desk in despair. Perhaps she’d bitten off more than she could chew this year.

 

-

 

The door was locked now. It should have been earlier. Widowmaker cursed herself. The situation was her own fault, really. Amélie had been sloppy and Widowmaker had done nothing to tidy up after her. They were fugitives from Dr. Griffe, and now at the mercy of a mouthy teenager whose definition of discretion didn’t prevent her live-tweeting her bowel movements. This had all gone wrong. This wasn’t how Dr. Griffe would have wanted it.

She ground her teeth together, frustrated at the situation she had created. Hana knew about Gérard, and Widowmaker could feel Amélie amping herself up into a fairly crippling panic attack near to the surface of her consciousness. This was the absolute worst thing that could have happened, with the very worst person.

“I could just kill them all.” Widowmaker said suddenly, the idea appealing greatly to her. She could kill Hana, so she would not reveal her secret. She could kill Lena, so that Dr. Griffe could not waste his efforts on anybody except Widowmaker. She could kill everybody if she wanted to. She could kill Dr. Griffe. She could kill herself. That was what she was for, wasn’t it? Killing? And in the end, if she couldn’t do that, she was worthless.

Widowmaker sat in Lena’s desk chair, staring at nothing in particular and spiralling into confused thoughts about her own existence. She began to fade as Amélie’s panic increased, and with Widowmaker’s regression so went Amélie’s memories. She panicked all the more, unable to hold onto the knowledge of her own awful fate. Cold, skeletal hands grasped the pen still, like a weapon, unable to coordinate themselves to write. On the pad of paper, in childish scrawl, she managed just to write

 

_LIE_

before the memories leaked out from between her fingers like sand. And then she was just sitting there in an unfamiliar room, feeling cold and tired. Amélie blinked and looked around at Lena, snoring fitfully. She smiled, not knowing why she was here, but happy that even in her sleepwalking, or her episodes of insanity, she had found herself here. She could have looked at Lena’s face forever, if the warm feeling blossoming in her chest hadn’t become too much to bear, forcing her back to her own room to take her heart medication.

The feeling perplexed her all day after that. It was like an ache, but she’d checked her pulse and her blood pressure, and they were within her normal limits. She was taking her medication. Angela could find nothing new wrong upon a rushed cardiothoracic examination in the medical school on Sunday afternoon.

Whatever it was, Amélie didn’t enjoy feeling like this. And she especially didn’t like the way the feeling rose to bursting whenever she looked out of her window and across the road.


	17. TOUR, BITCHES!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all. Another long delay and I am so honestly sorry about that. Work keeps extending my sick leave and sitting around all day is making me slumpy and un-creative. It's Christmas Eve today, so please consider this very short interlude chapter my apology and present to you all. Happy holidays, whatever you're celebrating!  
> (If you don't have anything to celebrate, my birthday is tomorrow, so you can celebrate that with me!)  
> Slightly sappy but I'd like to dedicate this chapter to my girlfriend (who reads this as well) for making 2016 a lot better for me than the shitty year it turned out to be. 143.  
> ALSO ALSO: AO3 user CrookTheKing did a fanart of this story and it's AMAZING??? Best present ever!! Thank you so much mate. Here's the link, and remember to get #TogaBooty trending :p   
> http://jamaicangingerbread.deviantart.com/art/Toga-Booty-652421586?ga_submit_new=10%253A1482298241
> 
> Oh and of course GUYS TRACER IS GAY AND HAS A GIRLFRIEND CALLED EMILY THAT IS MY NAME JUST GOING INTO A CORNER TO DIE. Thoughts in the comments if you like, my new year's resolution is to be better at answering them.  
> Thank you to all you guys for reading, kudos-ing, commenting, tumbling (@argonautic4l), playing OW on PS4 (Argonauticall) with me! It's been a fantastic few months for me. I really do love all of you.

“WELCOME TO TOUR, BITCHES!”

“Genji, is that really appropriate langua-”

“Oh, yeh, sorry. WELCOME TO TOUR, BITCHES AND BASTARDS! We’re all for gender equality here.”

Hanzo’s head fell into his hands. He would go on to spend over half of their journey weeping quietly at this slight upon his honour.

“Anyway,” Genji said, squeezing between his brother and the seat next to him to stand at the front of the bus in the aisle, “It’s tour! Otherwise known as four days abroad to get drunk, smash some booty, party hard, do things you’ll regret for the rest of your life –”

“And do sports.” Zarya reminded him. As coach, she condoned the party atmosphere of the Athletics tour only if her athletes weren’t so hungover that they mistook a javelin for a vaulting pole and accidentally skewered a judge.

“Yep. And the sports. But also the party. Mostly the party.”

Hanzo attempted to elbow his way to the front. “Your performance at the European Athletics Federation annual meet will reflect on Overwatch University, and upon the competency of your president – that is to say, you will make every effort to defend and uphold the honour of the Shimada –”

But at that moment, their coach swerved violently to avoid a meth-addled cyclist veering into their lane and Hanzo was thrown to the side into Zarya’s lap. The whole AA cheered and hollered. Zarya chuckled and picked Hanzo up as though he was as light as a bag of crisps and placed him back on his feet. You could have fried an egg on his face.

“There’ll be plenty of time for sexy shenanigans, bro. Chill your beans while we’re still on the coach. Besides, ‘Reeha and Angie have enough PDA going on to fill up our entire quota. Any more and we’ll have to declare it to customs.”

Genji threw a rogueish wink towards Fareeha and Angela, who were sat together in the row in front of Lena and Lúcio. Fareeha promply and as expected blushed and began to stutter in protest of her innocence, whereas Angela planted a kiss on her girlfriend’s cheek and winked right back.

“Oh, yeh, speaking of. We have a few new people with us for tour. You all know Angela – she’ll be our First Aid officer because Bowden is still recovering from the badger incident in Alderworth’s intensive care unit.”

They held a brief moment of contemplative silence for their old First Aider Tom Bowden. He had been savaged by a rabid badger while having sex in the bushes on Clapham Common. It wouldn’t have been so serious if he hadn’t have fallen into a patch of poison ivy right afterwards.

“We also have Fareeha with us, who is returning to the AA in an organisational role. Since the Paralympic events are on the other side of town and Hanzo gets too distracted by his reflection to manage you lot effectively, she’s our interim Vice-President for Tour. She knows the schedules, the hotel booking, all the important stuff. Bother her.”

Fareeha gave a timid little wave as people clapped for her return.

“We also had to recruit some more actual athletes or we’d be short of a qualifying squad. Sparks, Rodgers, Klimas, de Santos – wave so we can see you?”

Lúcio made a peace sign in the air above his seat but didn’t join in the chatter. He had his headphones on and was bobbing along to a thumping bass beat while reading a surprisingly thick book entitled Discus for Dummies. They’d co-opted him in at the very last minute, promising a free long weekend in Germany and lots of alcohol. They’d also somehow persuaded him that his experience using turntables was good practice for throwing a discus, mainly, Lena felt, because both a discus and records were flat and circular. However this logic could only be taken so far – if he had mastery of all flat and circular things by default, he could be a pizza chef, or a plate-maker, or somebody in charge of footballs as long as they were deflated. To be honest, her brain wasn’t screwed on particularly well.

Lena hadn’t admitted it to anybody, but this was the first time she’d be leaving Britain. Despite living right next to a huge, busy airport, her family hadn’t had the money for fancy exotic holidays. They’d been camping in Wales a couple times and to caravan parks on the south coast, but never out of the country. She was super nervous and had double and triple checked her passport, health card and documents. She’d even tried to get Angela to teach her some German, but it turned out that the Swiss spoke different German to actual Germans which seemed silly but was a fact that Lena had no ability to change.

The Overwatch AA were headed (on a particularly drizzly Thursday afternoon in February) to the _Universität Eichenwalde_ , where the European Athletics Federation was holding their annual meet.

“We’ve gotta make sure we take opportunities like this before Brexit,” Genji had said, “But try not to be confrontational with all the big, buff European sportspeople. I’ve made us all ‘I Voted Remain’ badges to wear to remind them that half of the country aren’t utter dingbats.”

“But we can’t even vote, Genji. We’re Japanese.”

“They don’t know that!”

“In fact, who here was even eligible to vote?”

Lena, Fareeha and Angela were the only ones who raised their hands, and after assuring everybody that they had voted to remain (“I’ve lived all my life by an airport, mate, foreigners are a-okay with me”), (“It is important that Great Britain does not return to a short-sighted policy of isolationism”), (“Only in a global community can we truly care for our sick effectively”) they had each taken a comically oversized bade with the European flag on it.

“Now, the coach journey will be like ten hours and the toilet’s blocked, so keep calm and carry on.”

“Why is the toilet blocked?”

“Hanzo went to shit and the stick up his ass fell in and clogged the u-bend.”

“Brother!”

Genji flipped his brother (frothing at the mouth by now) off and took his seat to a round of whooping and cheering.

The journey proved to be slow. There was, as there always is, traffic on the M25, and the queue to get in the Channel Tunnel took ages. One of the new recruits, Sparks, was very sick several times.

“Hope he’s not doing anything that’ll induce vertigo.” Lena muttered between the seats in front of her to Fareeha and Angela. Fareeha checked her list and groaned.

“Hammer throw.”

“Isn’t that the one where you have to spin around incredibly fast holding a heavy lump of metal on a cord?”

The sounds of Sparks vomiting stopped their giggles fairly quickly.

Somewhere around Antwerp Lena got bored and fell asleep. She’d been trying to avoid falling asleep around other people lately. Bad dreams plagued her when she closed her eyes. She’d never really suffered from nightmares before, but now was different. Every night she fell down endless dark pits, felt icy water leeching into the very marrow of her bones, a sense of something vague but terrifying lurking just out of sight. In her dreams she felt small and powerless and afraid, full of doubts and weaknesses. More than once she’d seen Fareeha and Lúcio giving her concerned looks in the morning.

This time was no different. Encompassing darkness, isolation, a nagging feeling that all of her friends were going to abandon her, that she’d never achieve her dreams, that she was worthless and awful and stupid. She was standing on the edge of a blasted, rocky cliff somewhere cold and windy. Somebody pushed her in the back and she fell, twisting in the air to see Amélie standing there and looking down at her with no expression on her face. One hand was extended. Had she used it to push Lena off, or was she reaching to save her? Her stomach twisted and her limbs flailed as the rocks came up to meet her –

“Lena? Hey, Lena! Wake up!”

Lena swam up from the terror of the dream to find herself sweaty and constricted by her seatbelt. Lúcio had a warm hand on her shoulder and Fareeha and Angela were turned in their seats to face her.

“Uh – sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeh. Fine. Don’t worry ‘bout silly old me.”

“But you were having a nightmare! Writhing around everywhere and crying out –”

“I said I’m fine. Just a stupid dream about failing exams.”

“But you got eighty-seven percent on our mock last week!” Fareeha protested.

“Thanks to your help.”

“It was a team effort. But – hey! Stop trying to change the subject. You sounded really upset.”

“I told you, it’s just a stupid stress dream.”

“But you have them a lot recently. We can hear you through your door.”

Lena couldn’t help it. She felt needled and attacked, and she lashed out. “Well then stop listening at my door! It’s none of your business!”

Angela’s calm voice cut in. “Lena, we’re your friends. We care about you and want you to be happy and healthy.”

“So what, you’re saying you think I’m not healthy? That I’m sick or whatever? I’m fine, so just back off.”

They did back off after that, but it left a sour taste in Lena’s mouth. She sat and wallowed for a while as the sun began to set outside the coach’s misted-up windows, wondering what the dream meant. Why had Amélie, of all people, been there? After their disastrous date, during which she’d apparently slipped on a patch of ice and hit her head – blacking out and waking up with a pounding headache and a text from Amélie explaining everything – she’d not even talked to her. In fact, Amélie seemed to be conspicuous by her absence. Her curtains had been drawn tight shut for the last couple of weeks and Lena hadn’t seen her on campus. Angela said she was attending lectures like normal, but whatever had gone on, it was clear that Amélie didn’t want to see Lena again.

“Good riddance.” Hana had muttered during their shift at the Watchpoint last week. “She’s bad news, Lena. I mean, hella sexy bad news, but still. Whatever happened, I reckon it’s for the best.”

Lena wasn’t sure if she agreed with Hana. Something was nagging in the back of her mind. Often she found herself dwelling on what could have gone wrong and how annoyed she was. She remembered the beginning of the date, and it had been good, hadn’t it? They’d laughed and joked around and been for a pretty walk in the hedge maze. And then she’d had to slip on that patch of ice by the fountain! Gah. This wasn’t fair. Amélie should have given her a second chance.

Especially when now Amélie was on her mind far too often. And in her dreams, apparently. The way she smiled like she knew a secret about you and wanted you to know she knew. Her porcelain skin and those clever amber eyes. Her thick, dark, black hair all pulled back into that high ponytail that swished from side to side when she walked like the tail of a prowling cat.

Oh, shit. Lena had a crush.

No. Absolutely no way was she going to crush on Amélie Lacroix. A rude, insolent, cold, distant, weird French posh-o? No chance. Not Lena’s type at all. No sir-ee. Who’d want a girl who looked like she could strangle you and you’d thank her afterwards?

Lena realised that she was suddenly sitting rather uncomfortably and blushed a deep red, thankful that it was getting dark. Oh ye gods. No way was she getting a lady-boner at the thought of Amélie Lacroix on a very full bus. No. Nope.

“The seats are kinda scratchy, aren’t they?” Lúcio said at the sight of her delicately trying to reposition herself.

“Oh – yeh. Really scratchy.” Lena nodded too much in agreement and ended up cricking her neck. “Making any progress with the discus?”

“Well, it looks like I have to throw it as far as possible.”

“Okay, that’s a good basic understanding.”

“Nah, that’s as far as I’ve got. Just gonna wing it, probably. Got better things to be doin’ with my time.”

“Yeh?”

“Oh yeh. Busy busy. Just put my new mix out, gotta keep up with the chatter.”

“I heard it. It’s great, mate.”

“Eh, I’m not super happy, but I’m a perfectionist with that shit. I gotta start organising more stuff back home though. Vishkar just demolished another three hundred of our houses to make room for a mall. All those families, my people, homeless – the money Vishkar gave them for relocating can’t even buy one of Vishkar’s one-bed flats no more. It’s robbery. Corruption.”

“I hear you. It’s so awful what’s going on there. If there’s anything I can do, you know I’ve got your back, yeh?”

“Always, amgia.” They fist-bumped. “And you know I’m with ya whatever shit you got going on.”

“Thanks mate. It means a lot, it really does. I just have to figure out what exactly that shit is before I can figure out how to deal with it.”

“Girl trouble?” Angela’s face appeared with the suddenness of a speeding bullet in the space between the seats in front. “Tell Auntie Angie, Lena.”

“You are such an insatiable gossip.”

“ _Nie!_ I’m your older and more world-wise friend who wants to help you and feed you cake.”

A banoffee muffin was pushed through the seat gap into Lena’s lap.

“How many baked goods are you concealing about your person right now?”

“Just the muffins.” Angela winked. “But I have a whole suitcase full in the baggage compartment.”

“I’ve gained so much weight.” Fareeha’s voice groaned from beside her, another face appearing between the seats. “She’s trying to kill me, Lena. Very slow. With type two diabetes.”

“Oh, shut up you. I saw you in the launderette the other day. You’ve got abs for days.

“No!”

“For _days_ , ‘Reeha.”

“Does _mein schatz_ want a bit of muffin?” Angela began to press another banoffee muffin affectionately against Fareeha’s cheek.

“Give it to Sparks. We all know he’s got an empty stomach.”

“And see it all over the floor twenty minutes later? No chance.” Angela cradled the muffin protectively as thought it was her gooey banana-filled baby. Lena munched on her own, savouring the glorious toffee taste.

“Dickens, this is so good! ‘Reeha, if I could eat Angela’s muffin at any time, I’d never say no.”

Several surrounding people snickered.

“Oi! Not in a weird way.”

“There will be no eating of muffins in hostel.” Zarya called over from across the aisle. “We are in dormitory rooms. Bunk beds.”

“That doesn’t stop muffin eating, just means you have to be very delicate. And not leave crumbs between the sheets.” Genji winked and high-fived Angela.

Slightly late to the party, Hanzo poked his head out from a seat very close to the front and took off a sleeping blindfold. “There are muffins? I should like to sample Angela’s muffin.”

He’d probably have honour killed Genji on the spot if he’d been able to see the face of explosive innuendo his brother was making right now.

“Five more hours to Eichenwalde.” Genji wheezed, unable to control his laugher at Hanzo’s complete puzzlement at their collective smirks. “Tour’s gonna be so good this year!”


	18. Tour/Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you all say to stop apologising for lateness but I'm British and thus hardwired to say sorry at every possible opportunity. I haven't posted since Christmas because I'm rubbish. I've moved jobs, which is yey more time in the operating theatre but nay longer days.  
> In this chapter we continue the story, and it's safe to say that both Lena and Amélie end up in a bit of trouble at the end of it...  
> If anybody can guess the identity of the first of the unnamed characters in this chapter (the one in the library), I probably don't have time to write you anything but I would love you very much. All the information to guess who she is is there in an earlier chapter.  
> As always, I'm on PSN as Argonauticall and Tumblr as argonautic4l and I'm awful at answering messages so please annoy me until I do.  
> This chapter is dedicated to the mother of my beautiful fat penguin child. Love you babe. I'm gonna get so much shit for this when you get off work tonight.<3

Rain continued to pelt south London after the Germany-bound busful of athletes pulled out of the university. It continued for days, dragging the already flagging student populace with it. The drains overflowed and the cobbled street of King’s Row flooded, destroying many ill-considered thin-soled shoes. Mid-year exams were in full swing, and desperately anxious students could be seen flinging their broken bodies between buildings and holding thick textbooks over their heads in a futile attempt to stave off the downpour. One waterlogged copy of _A Revised Encyclopaedia of European Mushrooms_ was rescued from a puddle by a heartbroken librarian around midday.

The climate suited Amélie just fine. It was an excuse to hide out indoors and socialise very little. The chill of the constant rain leeched into her bones and made her a tired, brittle girl, but long afternoons beside her favourite radiator in the library helped her feel human again. Nobody bothered her – all the people who for some reason cared about her enough to try and talk to her had gone on that sports trip. Except that nosy barista, Hana, who shot her suspicious and dirty looks whenever she saw Amélie, even if she didn’t quite understand why.

Amelie had to admit that life was difficult in the twenty-first century without a phone and a laptop. Her phone was mysteriously missing and her laptop was turned off and locked in her desk drawer in her room. She didn’t exactly know why she’d done this, but something deep inside her froze her hand every time she tried to reach for the lock. Some tiny voice in her head that said things were like that for a reason. She had decided to trust this voice, though why, she couldn’t say. It felt important.

Though still plagued by doubts about her sanity, Amélie had adapted to this new existence. She had defense mechanisms in place that helped anyway. Withdraw from anything that caused her to feel too many emotions, stay quiet, study hard.

This was where the fight came in.

Amélie sat at her windowsill on the Saturday after the sports trip left and pulled her curtains open just a crack. Through the incessant squall she could see across the road to Lena’s room. The lights were out, the curtains open, the room still and silent. It made Amélie feel oddly lonely to know that Lena wasn’t there.

_You miss her_ , her heart whispered.

“ _Yes. But she is better off without me_.” She replied, unaware she had spoken aloud. It seemed almost normal these days to carry on a conversation with herself. Whatever kind of psychiatric problem it was, she didn’t care. She was messed up enough already. This was just another drop in the ocean.

_Come now, Amélie. Don’t put yourself down with this nonsense. You’ve seen her from across the road. On campus. She’s not sleeping well. She seems sad. Hurt._

“ _Yes, and I did that to her. Was I awful on our date? What could I have possibly done?”_

The voice in her head said something but it was garbled, distant, as if spoken from underwater. She strained her mind to hear the words but they seemed to be locked behind a kind of mental barrier.

“ _How is it that there are things I cannot even tell myself?”_

She reached out and touched the glass. Whether it was warm or cold, she didn’t know. Her fingertips were freezing.

_I bet Lena has warm hands. Warm, dry hands._

Amélie wanted to hold her hands. She craved the touch of another human being. She told herself that anybody would do, but really it was Lena she wanted the most. Her smile like sunlight, voice like a shot of espresso. Amélie wanted Lena to touch her and bring her body back to life.

The ache in her chest worsened. Her eyes became wet. She sat in her dark room and pined for a girl who didn’t want to talk to her, much less be with somebody as screwed up as she was. Lena could have any girl she wanted. One who could laugh at her jokes and run around with her when she was hyperactive and make her smile. Amélie couldn’t do any of those things.

_Oh, pull yourself together. Call her and tell her._

“ _I can’t.”_ Her eyes flickered to the locked drawer. She knew so certainly that if she opened it, bad things would happen.

She shrugged off these thoughts and collected her books ready for another day in the library. It was understandably quiet on a Saturday afternoon, especially when the weather was bad and the sky was so overcast with bruise-coloured clouds that it was dark soon after midday. She found her spot and set to work.

It was late when she emerged from a particularly confusing set of notes about kidney function and saw that somebody had sat down near her on the same table. Amélie was briefly ruffled – this was her table. People knew to leave her alone when she studied.

The girl looked strangely familiar, though Amélie’s tired brain couldn’t quite place her face. Slightly older than her, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two. Pretty. She caught Amélie’s eyes for a second and then looked back down at her work. She had a pristine notebook and brand-new pencil-case, plus a copy of an obscured psychiatry textbook. It looked far too beaten-up to be one of the library’s stock. The librarians throttled anybody who so much as looked at one of their books the wrong way.

“Hey. Can you watch my stuff for one moment?” She asked suddenly. “I just need to go to the toilet.”

Amélie shrugged and nodded. The girl left, leaving her phone and laptop on the table. Stupid. Things got stolen if you didn’t keep them with you in the library. Anybody could get in – the turnstile gates at the entrance weren’t operational at weekends as part of a community access scheme.

The girl’s phone buzzed, vibrating the whole table. Amélie scowled and looked up to check if the girl was back yet. No such luck. The phone continued to vibrate. Again and again and again. Amélie gritted her teeth, her patience fraying. Some people were so inconsiderate in the library!

There was a click and the phone went to voicemail. The pre-recorded ‘leave a message at the tone’ line began to play out loud. Agh! To top it all, the girl hadn’t put it on silent. Fantastic. Amélie gripped her fountain bed with deep loathing on her face.

_“Please leave a message after the tone. Beep!”_

There was a second’s pause.

“ _You cannot hide from me, Amélie.”_

-0-

 

“Wilkommen, beinvenue, and welcome to the European Athletics Federation annual meet! My name is Baldereich Von Adler and I will be your commentator for the much-anticipated track and field finals!”

The booming voice of a bearded giant in the commentator’s box rang out around the stadium at the _Universität Eichenwalde_ , its stands full with spectators. Universities from across Europe had sent their best teams of sportspeople here to compete for medals and glory. All across the stadium fans and team members were brandishing their nation’s flags or their universities’ mascots, roaring out songs and chants, covering each other with face paint and throwing back pint after pint of thoroughly adequate German beer.

Lena was still in her tracksuit, sitting beside Angela, Fareeha and Zarya in the part of the stands claimed by the Overwatch team. They were all dressed in their colours of white, orange and blue, emblems proudly displayed on their chests and backs. Fareeha was propping up a lurid banner that read _~~UPHOLD SHIMADA HONOUR~~ GO TEAM!_

“Nervous?” Lúcio wiggled his eyebrows at her from where he was warming up. The discus throw was one of the first events, after the hammer throw and shot-put.

“A bit. Hundred metres is always last because it’s the big nail-biter. Gotta watch everybody else go. Gets your teeth jittering.”

“No doubt. You’ll be great, girl. You got spirit.”

“I’d rather have longer legs and an extra lung.”

“Pah. That’s cracked. Where you gonna put your extra lung?”

“In my longer legs.”

They doubled over giggling. Lúcio slapped Lena on the back and shrugged off his tracksuit, jogging on the spot. With one last quick look at _Discus for Dummies_ , he chucked the book over his shoulder (hitting poor Sparks in the face, who reflexively vomited for a third time that morning in what must be a physiological response to any sort of discomfort) and strode out onto the field. As he left, Zarya bellowed out: “Be sure to stretch before engaging in rigorous physical activity!”

“Erm, ‘Reeha?”

“Yes, Lena?”

“Has Lúcio ever actually thrown a discus before the actual event?”

Fareeha scratched her chin in thought. “Don’t think so. But he read the first six pages of the book, and we did watch some videos on YouTube of discus throwing last night.”

“So he’s super-prepared for an international tournament.”

“Go team!” Fareeha said with a sarcastic smile, wiggling the banner. “Hey – what’re you doing, babe?”

Angela had jumped to her feet, fire in her eyes. She pulled a vuvuzela from somewhere it’s probably best not to question inside of her first aider’s tracksuit and let rip on it. The sound burst out, causing Lena and Fareeha to clap their hands over their ears in shock. Sparks was violently sick again.

“GET OUT THERE AND KICK SOME ARSE, LÚCIO!” She roared, in a voice twelve times louder than you’d ever think a woman her size would be capable of. The teams around them turned to look in shot. Even the commentator, Von Adler, stopped mid-sentence describing a Lithuanian university’s piss-poor shot-put technique to gawp.

“Oh my god,” Lena whispered to Fareeha, “Your girlfriend is a soccer mom.”

“What the hell is a soccer mom?”

“It’s like, you know, those American mums who get way too obsessed by their kids’ sports. They stand on the side-lines and yell. I saw a TV program where two of them got in a fight, and one broke the other’s nose. It was great.”

“DO YOU HAVE AN ARM OR A BLOODY POOL NOODLE? THROW THE SHOT-PUT YOU GREAT MUPPET!”

“Save me.” Fareeha whimpered as she was passed the ceremonial vuvuzela of heckling.

“Nah mate. You’re dating her. You deal with the monster she’s become.”

“BACK ME UP ON THE VUVUZELA BABE.”

Fareeha gave a lame little toot, her eyes full of anguish. Lena just laughed and concentrated on Lúcio.

“And following the admittedly disappointing show on the shot-put, here come our discus competitors! What a good showing this year – the discus has of course re-emerged as a popular field event after the stunning show in the Rio Olympics by Slovenian superstar –”

Lena tuned out Von Adler and focused on Lúcio. Despite his chill demeanour, she could tell he was nervous. All these people watching him couldn’t be a new thing – he was famous back in Rio – but he probably wasn’t used to being without his costume and that frog mask.

“Next up, a completely new name in the bracket, from Overwatch University in the UK, it’s Lúcio Correia de Santos!”

“How did we get Lúcio a good enough qualifying throw to enter if he’s never thrown a discus before?” Lena asked Fareeha out of the corner of her mouth.

“Not sure. Genji said he sorted it out.”

“I hope he didn’t have anybody assassinated. You hear things about the Shimada corporation, innit?”

“THROW THE TINY STONE PIZZA, LÚCIO! YOU CAN DO IT!”

“Angie, don’t you think you’d enjoy it more if you watched intently – and, um, quietly?”

“Nonsense. The team needs our vocal support. THROW THE THING!”

Zarya got into it too. “Da, Lúcio! Throw the thing!”

Lúcio limbered up, grabbed the discus and tested the weight in his hand. Apparently deciding he was satisfied, he got into the circle and with a final thumbs-up and a wink flung his body into the acceptable masculine G-force pirouette. He let the discus go and it soared into the sky like a vengeful Frisbee, finally plopping down just shy of the 45-metre mark.

“Holy shit, he’s pretty good?”

“You sound so surprised.” Hanzo huffed as he made his way up to their party in the stands. “Any athlete chosen by a society president with such a discerning eye for talent as myself –”

Not entirely by accident, Lena thought, Angela chose that moment to give a loud honk on the vuvuzela that drowned Hanzo out entirely.

Lúcio was so surprised by the success of his first throw that he flubbed the others, ending up in sixth place at the end of the event. This was not by any means a bad thing, given that there were twelve people in his category and he had literally never picked up a discus before. He returned to them, sweating but upbeat, and received hollers and high-fives.

“You got hella skills, Lúcio. You been holding out on us?”

“Nah. I seen my mama throw plates at people who piss her off. It’s the same wrist action.”

The events proceeded and Lena became more and more nervous. Sparks amused the audience in the hammer throw by failing to release it and ending up thwacking himself in the head. Angela and the other first aiders rushed him into their tent to be checked over for a concussion. Hanzo vented his frustration at his ‘mediocre’ team by placing first in the archery and was a smug bastard about it for the rest of his life.

They received a snapchat from Genji wishing them luck and saying he was about to do the Paralympic hurdles. Then, in the blink of an eye, it was time for the hundred metres and Lena’s hands were shaking.

She wasn’t a nervy person. Running was one of her passions, but she enjoyed it when she was doing it, not when she was getting ready to do it and all eyes were on her. She shucked herself out of her tracksuit and jogged over to the track where the rest of the women’s team were waiting. She recognised a few faces here and there from past meets when she had been in college and greeted them warmly, but they were here to compete.

“The hundred metres is obviously one of the most anticipated events in every meet. First we have the women’s’, a good turnout today including a face people might recognise – Lena Oxton running for Overwatch University in Great Britain. Now, this girl was famous for her scorching time in the Under-18 nationals two years ago – blink and you’ll miss her!”

“GO LENAAAAA!” Angela and Zarya yelled into the quiet stadium, eliciting giggles and whooping from the crowd. Fareeha gave two toots on the vuvuzela for encouragement and Lúcio waved.

“But, ah, as you know we’re being broadcasted live on the Eurosport network – channel 433 – right now, and some viewers say they recognise Miss Oxton from somewhere else…”

Von Adler gestured at the huge screen that was showing scores and highlights from the events. Up on it appeared a screenshot of several tweets.

 

**Singhstar**

(@savandersinghss)

Hey @Overwatchuni @bayboi92 @vaguedinosaursounds tune into Ch 433! Our lads and ladies doing the sports stuff and a little somethin we recognise!!!

 

**Christian Bayless**

(@bayboi92)

@savandersinghss HOLY MOTHRA can that be… the return of #TogaBooty ?????????

 

**Xx-Al-Farookie-xX**

(@vaguedinosaursounds)

She’s back in home colours #TogaBooty I’d recognise that ass anywhere. Damn son! Lena Oxton gets hotter girls than all of us #goals

**Mirembe**

(@mirembermefondly)

@bayboi92 @vaguedinosaursounds @savandersinghss you lot are all disgusting. Poor girl doesn’t want you ogling her arse. Cmon @overwatchuni @ninjaeyepatchaccountant u with me?

 

**Things Prof Amari says**

(@ninjaeyepatchaccountant)

@mirembermefondly Prof Amari would definitely say: “10/10 arse would recommend”

 

**Mirembe**

(@mirembermefondly)

@ninjaeyepatchaccountant you’re awful. Prof Amari would never say that.

 

**Professor Ana Amari (√)**

(@officialamari)

I’m with @mirembermefondly, @ninjaeyepatchaccountant Lena is a lovely girl who does not deserve strangers objectifying her. What would Prof Amari actually say? “Piss off.”

 

**Bake Me Like One of Your Swiss Rolls**

(@hipstercratic_oath)

@officialamari @savandersinghss @bayboi92 @vaguedinosaursounds As close friend here with her rn I can confirm that Lena has a 10/10 arse that none of you fuckwipes will ever get to touch.

 

**Fareeha Amari**

(@raptora)

@hipstercratic_oath can confirm that Lena’s arse is A++ would hire. Have touched would recommend. You creeps go back to your caves until you figure out how to respect girls.

 

**Professor Ana Amari (√)**

(@officialamari)

That’s my girl @raptora

 

**Fareeha Amari**

(@raptora)

@officialamari Mum legit please do not tweet at me ever

 

Lena reflected that she really needed to start using this twitter thing. She awkwardly tried to adjust her very tight running shorts, self-conscious and red-faced.

“Well, whether or not she has a nice bottom, the true test of every athlete here will be their times. It’ll be a nail-biting one for sure!”

Lena limbered up and went towards the start line. Her heart pounded in her chest and her brain was all over the place. She wished she could just have a shot of something cool and calming right now to clear her headspace.

Time passes so slowly when you’re going incredibly fast. From the second she pushed off, Lena felt the moments stretch into minutes, like a 3-D freeze frame from a Hollywood movie. She heard the crowd screaming from behind thick glass, the beating of her heart as isolated thumps in the silence. She saw through her running glasses ahead of her, that finish line, and then the small crowd of her friends gathered in the stands just beyond it. Fareeha was stretched up to her full and impressive height mid-bellow with the banner held above her head. Angela screamed encouragement while Lúcio had taken up the vuvuzela. Even Hanzo watched her whilst biting his nails. But suddenly there was somebody else she wished was there.

Lena knew her form was good. She knew from the burn in her lungs and the tension in her muscles and the sheer force of wind resistance that she was going to win. She would win and jump and whoop for joy and she wanted somebody in particular to see her win. She wanted Amélie there. Wanted to impress her.

As she threw herself across the finish line, in that rush of endorphins they call the runner’s high, Lena resolved to call her and tell her how she felt.

Noise exploded down on her. She staggered for a moment, then launched into a flip and a handspring, landing with her arms out to tumultuous applause from all around. Hanzo had turned white mid-clap, a single tear trickling from his right eye. Fareeha and Lúcio and Angela were clambering down from the stands and running towards her, and Von Adler was saying something about a meet record in a surprised voice. That didn’t matter to her right now.

“YOU DID IT!” Angela screamed as Fareeha and Lúcio took Lena by each of her legs and hoisted her onto their shoulders. Lena beamed out at the crowd, revelling in the glory of it all. The tweets were gone from the screen, replaced by her time in big letters.

“I ran an 11.8? What the fuck?”

“Lena! Hey, Lena!”

Genji was jogging over to them, his running blades still on, grinning like a fool.

“Hey!”

“You ran a goddamn 11.8! That’s like, Olympic!”

“Not quite, Genji.”

“But still! Lena, you’re amazing!” He swept her up in a great big hug.

“But what about you? Don’t you have the mens para hundred?”

“Already done it, of course. Legged it over here as soon as I finished.”

“And?”

He puffed himself up and glared directly at Hanzo. “And, of course I won, Silver in the hurdles, bronze in the 200 but to be honest my heart wasn’t in it anyway.”

“Win buddies!”

“Damn straight!” They high-fived. After a moment an event official asked them politely to move off the track so that the men’s hundred metres could start, and they hopped back up into the stands to gush.

Lena gulped down her lucozade and beamed at everything, still floating on cloud nine. Everybody was talking excitedly around her, joking and laughing and celebrating. There would be one hell of a party at the University tonight once the event finished before they left back for rainy Blighty tomorrow.

Some rando won the men’s hundred metres and the event packed up with the presentation of medals and the closing ceremony. Lena felt the weight of the gold around her neck and couldn’t stop grinning all the way back to the hostel. There was just time to shower and dress up before heading back over to the _Universität Eichenwalde_ where the afterparty would be held in their student bar. Lena had opted for a crisp white shirt and tight blue skinny jeans. As thankful as she was for everybody from Angela to Prof Amari for defending her from creeps on twitter, this party was the time for #TogaBooty.

Zarya bought them a round of drinks to get them merry and they mingled with the other athletes, socialising with other students from all over Europe. Lena accidentally ended up with a group of utterly insane Swedish people (whose accents reminded her somewhat unpleasantly of Mr. Lindholm) playing a drinking game. It was all in Swedish and she didn’t understand the rules, but apparently she was losing badly because they kept cheering and gesturing for her to drink. Rather tipsy, she left their table feeling the whole thing might have been rigged.

At some point, a DJ arrived and the music started. The athletes all unwound from their tense races and brutal workout regimes on the dancefloor, singing along to the hits and dancing wildly. Lena stole Angela from Fareeha briefly to do a truly inspiring act of Danny and Sandy from Grease to ‘You’re the One That I Want’, to great applause from the crowd, then Lúcio dropped jaws by breakdancing. Zarya got talking to a pretty barmaid, and once they noticed her flexing her muscles they knew she wouldn’t be much use to them for the rest of the night.

“Hey! Hey, Lena Oxton?”

Lena turned to see a gorgeous dark-skinned girl she recognised from the hundred-metres approach her.

“I am she.”

“I just wanna say – amazing. _Incroyable_. Eleven-eight? I’m in awe.”

Lena blushed to the roots of her wild hair. “Ah, thanks.”

“You had, hmm, how you say in English? _Grande forme_. Great, ah, technique. I’m sorry, my English is not so good.”

“Nah, mate, it’s great! Whereabouts you from?”

“France.”

“With the Uni of Savoy lot?”

“ _Oui_.”

“Lena. Pleased to meet ya.”

Lena offered a hand, but it was never shaken. Instead, the girl kissed her.

Ooh la la.

Lena kissed the girl, who never gave her name, for quite a while. They danced together and got handsy as night turned into early morning. At some point, they left the bar and began to walk together back to the hostel.

Lena sobered up on an old, mossy bridge over a roaring river. She looked at the girl and realised that this wasn’t what she wanted to do.

“Hey. Um, I’m so sorry, but I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“Oh. Uh. Was it anything I did?”

“No.” Lena pushed the guilt out of her mind. It was better to say something before they did anything. “I should be sorry for leading you on. I mean, I liked kissing you. You’re hot. But…”

The girl sighed. “But there’s somebody else.”

“I think so.”

“Is it the girl you were with in the photo? The Arabic one?”

“Reeha? No, no, not her. It’s… it’s funny, when you talk, your accent, it’s a lot like hers.”

The girl looked a little chagrined. “Is she from Annecy too, then?”

“I dunno. No idea about French places. I’ve never asked.”

The girl’s face suddenly changed, as though pieces of a puzzle were slotting into place.

“You… you go to Overwatch University, yes?”

“Yeh.”

“And the girl goes to your university? In your year?”

“Yeh. What’re you getting at?”

Her face fell. “Zere was a rumour, of where she ran away to. They said she escaped to England. To Overwatch. That her father arranged it all, ah, _en cachette_. Secretly.”

Lena took a step back. “Spit it out, if you’re gonna say anything.”

“I went to high school with a girl who killed her boyfriend. Her name was Amélie Lacroix.”


	19. Forgotten/Loved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was meant to be much longer and shift between Amelie and Lena's viewpoints, but I found the first bit very intense and didn't feel like writing more for now.  
> I just want to warn people (CONTENT WARNING) that this chapter contains some seriously messed-up implications. Mentions of suicide, kidnapping, brainwashing, and also some violence. Alas, Amélie won't have it very good for a while. Let's hope that Lena's newfound knowledge as of the end of last chapter won't dissuade her from searching for Amélie? Who knows. Well, I do. I know how this story ends and I'm committed to writing it. If you feel it's rather bleak now, please don't despair. Things will get better. In the end.  
> As always, thank you all for your support! My tumblr is Argonautic4l and my PSN is Argonauticall. I try to respond to tumblr messages and asks now as ao3 comments stack up so much, but I read every single one of them and they make me so happy!  
> Also I got into uni blah blah blah.

The room smelled musty, like a mattress rarely turned and curtains oft pulled shut to keep out the sun. There was blood, too – its iron tang filled her nostrils. She felt one warm drop slide from inside her nose and hang precariously for a moment before dropping down onto her jeans.

Amélie tried to clear her head. Orientate herself. But her eyes were covered and her hands bound behind her back to the creaky office chair she sat on. Through the thin walls she heard murmuring, the babbling of a television with the noise on low, the rattling of a maid’s cart outside. She knew this smell. These noises. This was a cheap hotel. The kind you hid in. Or, the kind somebody hid you in.

“ _You’re awake._ ” The girl said. A terrifyingly familiar French voice. Its accent identical to Amélie’s. She thought for a moment in her hazy mind that it was herself.

“ _Where am I?_ ”

“ _Some scummy English hotel. Father chose it.”_

_“Father?”_

But Amélie didn’t really need to ask who that could be. She knew with chilling clarity who it was. Who this girl was. Who this girl thought Dr Griffe was.

“ _Are you… the one they never found? Catherine… Dubois?”_

_“So smart to be so stupid.”_ The girl sneered, giving Amélie’s shin a kick that made her gasp in pain _. “I don’t understand what Father sees in you. A weak, sick girl. Won’t follow his orders properly. Runs away to this awful shithole of a country to play at a normal life.”_

“ _Griffe is not your father, Catherine. You have been duped.”_

Amélie cried out as Catherine’s palm struck the side of her face. “ _How dare you! You shouldn’t even say his name, you filthy little fuck! You treasonous, betraying little daddy’s girl! Do you know what your misbehaviour does to him? Do you know that he weeps at night over you? Moans your name in his sleep? Drinks to the bottom of his glass hoping to find your face in it?”_

Amélie’s mind raced, whatever Catherine had drugged her with beginning to fade from her brain. She couldn’t see the girl, but the fanaticism in her voice told her enough. What had Griffe done to her, to break her so? How had she survived after killing her boyfriend, kept quiet all these years?

As adrenaline surged through Amélie’s body, the veil upon her memory slipped away as easily as a sheet of silk tossed aside by the wind. She remembered everything. Remembered Griffe and Widowmaker. She remembered all the awful things he had made her forget. It seemed they had been waiting just outside of her conscious mind, so close to being known these days, ready to flood back in. Her heart twisted and thumped at the thoughts. He had… he had made her… to Lena…

She gave a furious grunt and tried to pull at her bindings. They were uncomfortably tight, but she was used to restricted blood flow anyway. Her limbs were still heavy. Muscles weak and atrophied. Pain pounding across her body from her stupid, useless, broken heart. Catherine laughed.

“ _Amélie Lacroix. Father’s most beloved. I think he truly does love you, you know. In his own, strange way. I think he loved your mother just as much. He has this photograph, on his desk, of everybody on this holiday. Marc and Stefan, those two adopted brothers. Madéline, who by then was engaged to Marc. Then Danielle, who sits next to Father. He loved her, but she loved handsome Stefan who was to be a heart surgeon like his famous papa. He talks to that photo. He talks to Danielle.”_

This information crashed over Amélie like an icy wave. Thadeas had fancied her mother? She knew that photo. It had been taken in her father’s final year of medical school. He had wanted her then, but she knew her parents had married only a year after that.

But it made no sense. If Griffe had fancied Danielle, why had he never asked her out? Why had he waited, watched… wallowed?

“ _He tells me the story all the time. When he gets drunk. Of a beautiful girl with soft, dark hair who was top of his class. How he was bullied by the brothers Lacroix in medical school, who were meant to be his ‘friends’. How they laughed at his ideas. They were going to be heart surgeons. They had their famous father and all of the contacts they could ever want. First pick of hospitals. Internships. Handshakes and back-pats and ‘You turned out great just like your old man’s’. They always outshone him, I think he feels. But they ignored him at their own peril.”_

Amélie felt the girl’s presence hear to her. The blindfold over her eyes was roughly untied and pulled off to reveal a dim, dingy hotel room exactly as she had imagined. Catherine returned to stand in front of her, leaning on a rickety desk. It had a single feature: a laptop, off for now, but with the screen pointed directly towards Amélie.

“ _My father worked hard.”_

_“Your father was handed his career on a silver platter! And then he had to go and steal Danielle out from under my Father! A spiteful, lion’s-share type of man, Stefan. But it does not matter. Father has not wanted Danielle for some years. She is old. Spoiled.”_

She turned on the laptop. The blank video messaging window flickered into life like an awful phantom on the screen. Amélie shied away from it instinctively, her eyes watering at the bright screen in the dark room. She tried to stall for time.

“ _I don’t understand. You were missing for years. Where did you go?”_

“ _Father saved me. Hid me away after I killed Adrien. He taught me. Took care of me. Loved me, for a while. Until he decided he would pursue you. Decided he was ready, after that other girl killed herself in her prison cell. Rachel.”_ Something wicked came over Catherine’s face, something perverse and evil. “ _She loved Father so much. Used her one phone call to contact him after the police called her. He told her to kill herself. So she did. He was sure of his process after that.”_

Vomit rose in Amélie’s throat. Rachel Aubert. A smiling face in a newspaper article. A girl presumed guilty. A killer. A puppet. Just one small sacrifice in Griffe’s plan.

“ _Why me?”_

She tilted her head to one side, fingers playing over the laptop’s touchpad, making a show of thinking. She had once been young and whole and pretty. Even now, she was beautiful. If you didn’t look to closely. If you didn’t know that Griffe had her mind firmly in his grasp. All of that lived behind her eyes and in her soul was what he had put there. Amélie didn’t even want to think what she meant when she said that he had ‘loved her… for a while’.

“ _You were always the end goal, I think. He wants you for his own. To be his Danielle. He had you kill the son of Marc – conveniently your boyfriend – to spite him. But I think I know what he wants you to do. The ultimate act of transgression, he calls it. You can ask him yourself, soon.”_

_“No!”_

But Catherine had pressed the button. The dial tone was a sugar-soft in the dark room. And then he was there, a face on the screen. Thadeas Griffe. Her saviour. Her shoulder to cry on, her listening ear. A man she had trusted her whole life. Who had said he was making her better. And instead… instead he was this… this…

“ _Twisted monster.”_ She hissed at him.

“ _You wound me, Amélie.”_ Griffe smirked. “ _You have been a nuisance with all of this. I had to send Catherine. I have been without help around the house for several days now, you know. She’s an awful cook, but I’ve taught her to clean well. She’s very useful, Catherine. Very loyal. Unlike you. She has helped me out so much these past few years. Killed several loose-lipped acquaintances. Those asking too many questions. But she’s… imperfect. Hotheaded. Emotional. A zealot, somewhat. My process wasn’t perfected then. But you, Amélie…”_

He took in a great shuddering breath, his pupils dilating. He sat at the same desk in his study, but he was no longer immaculate. Several days stubble covered his cheeks. His shirt was rumpled, his tie pulled free and flung behind him, where the empty plates and remains of take-away and microwave meals festered. His eyes, so kind, so deep and understanding, were bloodshot. He wrung his hands together like he was trying to suffocate the air between them.

“ _I had thought I could wait. That you were and would always be Widowmaker, deep inside. But this university, this distance between us… it is bad for you, my darling. It’s ruining all my hard work. So I will accelerate my plans. It does not matter so much. The outcome is the same.”_

_“And what outcome is that, you bastard?”_

Griffe clicked his tongue as if to chastise her for her language. “ _Having you kill Gerard was just the start, my love. A warning shot, a small scolding for Marc. He was complicit in your father’s mistreatment of me, make no mistake. But to kill him? No. Better leave him a broken, grieving father. It is Stefan who deserves the worst.”_

Dr Griffe looked… hungry.

_“Danielle is old. Ugly. Her elegance is fading. And I am a realistic man. I would never truly have her anyway. But you, my sweet, delicate Amélie… you are still as pure and fragile as the day you were spun from glass. I am going to have you all for my own. And because you love me, you will kill him. Stefan. You will make yourself a widow and an orphan for me. A fitting tribute.”_

Amélie was violently sick onto the floor by her side. Catherine gagged in disgust, shuffling away into the deeper shadows of the room.

“ _Come now, my love. You know it isn’t bad. You’ve done it before. You told me it feels good. I made it feel good for you, Amélie. So that it’s easier.”_

_“I will never lay a finger on my papa.”_

_“Oh, Amélie won’t. But Widowmaker? She has no much reservations. Catherine. If you please.”_

Catherine stooped down and reached into a bag at her feet. Amélie saw them. Recognised them all. The pills she’d been taking for years. It was strange to see so many of them there, all arranged and partitioned and organised. She’d never realised there were so many. Some for her heart. More for her head.

Catherine took the first handful out and walked over to Amélie. She gestured to open up, but Amélie averted her head and pursed her lips shut.

“ _Oh, really. Come now, my sweet. Don’t be ornery. It’s for the best.”_

_“Fuck off.”_

_“You are getting a foul mouth on you. Probably something to do with that annoying girl. What was her name? Leanne? Lena? The short-haired one. It’s been a while since I saw her. Catherine, once I have begun here, could I trouble you to return to the university and find this girl? Tell me how she is? She was part of a surprisingly successful experiment I performed some months ago. I’d like to catch up. A follow-up appointment, if you will.”_

_“Of course, Father.”_

_“Now make her take them.”_

Catherine seized Amélie’s chin and pried her jaw open with a wrenching pain. She pushed the pills inside and held it shut, pinching Amélie’s nose until her dizzy oxygen-deprived brain began to struggle and she swallowed just to make it stop.

The pills sank like a stone into Amélie’s stomach. She shruggled and flailed, desperate to get out before they took effect and rendered her a pliant zombie like Lena had been. It couldn’t end here. Not when she’d remembered again. Not when she might finally have found a place she had friends. Where she felt safe.

“ _You know,_ ” Griffe said to nobody in particular, “ _Stefan was always so good at fixing hearts. He believed the heart was the key to everything. But the heart is nothing – a simple, mechanical pump that keeps the blood circulating. It is the mind where we become human. Where we are born and live and die. The mind makes us what we are. And I – not Stefan – have learned how to control the mind. I find it ironic that his little girl has such a broken heart. And soon a broken mind, too. Then what shall she be? Will you even be human then, Amélie?”_

She tried to scream, but the sound died in her throat with a heavy gargle. Her vision swam in and out of focus. Fog began to roll in behind her eyes. Thick, calm fog.

_“Now, Amélie. Listen to me. Listen to my voice. Are you listening?”_


	20. The Missing Piece (Or, bush leopard wrasslin')

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. It's me. I was wondering if after all this time you'd like to UPDATE YOUR FIC ARGO. So, here's 5.4k words and much less violence and angst for you, while moving the story on.  
> I have very little time to write these days and I thought a lot recently about abandoning this fic. I felt it wasn't fair to you guys to keep you waiting so long. But writing is my hobby, my creative outlet, for my enjoyment - I work full-time in a pretty intense job so I can't keep to a schedule like a full-time writer or a student or something. But this fic was how got out of my creative and life slump last summer. This fic got me and kept me in the Overwatch fandom. And perhaps most importantly, this fic was how I met my wonderful, gorgeous, strong, brilliant girlfriend @Kallinkelly. So I'm going to finish it. It might take time, but please bear with me. We're definitely closer to the end than the start now, by a long way. Stuff is getting serious and the stakes are going up. The finale is coming. I'm excited to share how this ends with you guys.  
> Once again, thank you for reading. Kudos and comments give me life.

It was six in the morning and time for Lena’s run.

The alarm clock blared and beeped and hollered in her ear for a perfunctory seven minutes before she turned it off by slamming it against her bedside table lamp. Then, she rolled over and continued to snooze.

This would have been easier if not for a strange noise from the next-door room.

One brown eye wrenched itself open in the dimness, Lena’s sleepy brain struggling to make sense of the noise. She was used to waking up to noises in the house – she had several younger siblings, after all, and kids loved to bawl their lungs out before dawn. That was perhaps why she recognised the sound – sniffling, sobbing, and then –

“ _Droga_!” Lúcio growled, followed by the sound of a fist slamming into a table. Crying wasn’t like Lena’s chirpy, laid-back flatmate, but violent anger was definitely too out of character to ignore. She pushed her covers off, apologised to the new dent in the casing of her alarm clock, and tiptoed out into the corridor.

The light under Lúcio’s door and the mumbling of some kind of reporter told Lena he was watching the news.

“… _Os grupos de protesto expressaram indignação com as ações da Corporação Vishkar e pediram prosseguimento imediato por acusações de homicídio_ …”

“ _Bastardos!”_ Lucio shrieked at the TV, slamming his fist again. Lena didn’t need to be a Modern Foreign Languages student to understand that one. She heard the dial tone of a phone, then ringing, until what she assumed was the Portuguese version of ‘please leave a message after the tone’. “ _Mãe… por favor… pegar_ …”

Lena knocked, and the door creaked open on a rusty hinge and broken lock.

“Oh, sweetie.” She said, seeing Lúcio. He was curled up in his froggie pyjamas on his desk chair clutching a stuffed frog and his phone to his chest. His music equipment was pushed back to make room for his laptop, upon which played a stream of a news report. It was all in Portuguese, but Lena saw a demolished building lying in rubble, teams of search and rescue personnel, and ambulances racing their way through evening traffic.

He looked up at her with tears in his eyes.

“Lena,” he croaked, and she rushed to envelop him in her arms, “God save us.”

“What’s happened?”

“They demolished it.” He pointed to the screen. “One of the old apartment blocks in the favelas – in the slums. Vishkar muscled their way to buying the land, but the people had nowhere to go. They refused to leave when they were evicted. And Vishkar just… they just…”

“With… with people inside?” Lena’s eyes bulged.

He nodded, then dialled the phone again. The same message played and he let out a strangled sob. “My _avó_  lived there. My mom visits her a lot… I can’t get a hold of her. I don’t know if she was there. If she’s save. Oh, _meu deus_ …”

“God, Lúcio… I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling right now. We’ll get this sorted. It’ll be okay. You hear me? We’ll get in touch with your mum.”

But he just burst out crying again.

Lena was at a loss for what to do. She said the same things again and again, hoping they’d make him feel better, but every time the dial tone timed out, fresh tears leaked from Lúcio’s eyes and he became stiffer, shakier, more afraid and upset.

“Hey, luv, it’s gonna be-”

“No! Lena, I appreciate you trying to help but please, for the love of God, shut up! It’s not all gonna be okay, don’t you see? This is never gonna stop! These ruthless corporations, they destroyed my home, my culture, now they might have taken my family too? And I’m sitting here in comfort thinking – thinking that music’s gonna change that? Nothing’s ever gonna change! They’re just gonna keep taking and taking and gobbling up homes and families and shitting out money!”

He paused to take a breath and seemed surprised at his own outburst, and how he was standing up, his fists clenched, one step taken towards her. He immediately shrunk back, startled, and put his hands up to make it clear he wasn’t going to do anything. But Lena’s heart was beating fast. Her own hands were curled into fists instinctively.

“Sorry… sorry… Lena, I shouldn’t shout at you, you’re just trying to help… but please. Please, _amiga_ … just give me a second. Give me time. Space. I need… I need to make a plan. Need to sort this out.”

“If there’s anything I can do, Lu-”

His eyes were so sad. “That’s the thing, Lena. I don’t know if there’s anything anybody can do. But if there is, I know you have my back. Means a lot. Thank you.”

She knew she was being dismissed, but kindly.

“Okay mate. Stay strong.”

He nodded and she backed out while he called the number again, his jaw quivering. In anger, in fear, Lena didn’t know. Probably both.

She was wide awake now and filled with dread and guilt. What could she do to help him? Absolutely diddly-squat, that’s what. Short of flying to Rio de Janeiro and digging through rubble with her bare hands, she was powerless. And that was not a good feeling. Powerless people did stupid things.

“Lena?”

Fareeha’s door was open a crack, dim light spilling out. It wasn’t Fareeha, but Angela standing there in nothing but an oversized t-shirt of Fareeha’s. She looked mussed – but not early morning mussed, more like pulled and all-nighter bloodshot-eyed and caffeine-addled.

“Hey. Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, no. Fareeha just fell asleep.”

“Just? It’s six in the morning.”

“We’ve been prepping for the trial. It’s just after the Easter break.”

“That soon? Tough. I got the witness summons the other day. Do you want any help?”

“No, thank you though.” Another person turning down her offer of help. Was there nobody who needed her? Nobody who she could help? “Fareeha’s very stressed. The trial is just before the big exams. Trying to deal with both is hard for her.”

“Tell me about it. I can’t believe we’re over halfway already. This year’s gone so fast.” Lena felt a pang of panic and loneliness. “I don’t suppose you want to grab a morning coffee?”

Angela smiled wearily and shook her head. “You are too kind, Lena. But I should stay with Fareeha. You know her sleep is bad these days.”

“Okay. If you want me to pick you up anything, just text me.”

“Will do. And… and if there’s anything we can do for Lúcio, we will. We’re with you if he needs help.”

“Nobody seems to much like asking for help any more, Angie.” Lena said before she could stop herself. If her words wounded the medic, Angela didn’t show it. She simply nodded silently and closed the door. Lena stood on the dark landing in the wan morning light with all her friends’ doors closed around her and felt, for the first time in many months, truly alone.

“Break the cycle.” She muttered to herself, forcing the reserves of her optimism to drive her forward. She dressed and went to run, but her heart wasn’t in it. The university seemed so empty. The holidays must be starting soon, and then afterwards came May and the beginning of summer exams. Then? A long summer of work.

Lena arrived at the Watchpoint slightly late – not that Hana would have noticed, because she was asleep in the cupboard underneath the milk steamer anyway. Lena set up the café and waited for their regular earlies, allowing Hana to sleep in as long as possible before rousing her for Mr. Lindholm’s inspection. They both took their regularly scheduled bum-grope stoically.

“You’re quiet, Oxton.” Hana said as she yawned all over Mr. Morrison’s caramel Frappuccino. Mr Reyes took a double espresso: black and steamy, like his soul. They were two of their most beloved regulars. Today, they were arguing about ducks. Neither Lena nor Hana had the energy to eavesdrop effectively on their heated conversation.

“Back at you.”

“I’m just knackered. You know how it is. Study all day, stream all night, thug life and all that. I have an excuse. But I know you’re a health nut, so all of your morning jogs and, I dunno, protein bars and quinoa should be keeping you eternally chirpy.”

“There are things in life that even protein bars and quinoa don’t fix.”

“All right Confucius, I didn’t say I was an agony aunt.”

“Why’re you being so needly this morning, Hana?”

Hana snorted and wiped the spout of the steamer. “I’m not ‘needly’.”

“No, you’ve been weird to me for weeks. Did I do something wrong?”

“It’s really nothing-”

“Bull and shit.”

Mr Morrison coughed indiscreetly from his booth and gave Lena a pointed glance.

“I just – I can’t say it, okay? I’m not – not allowed?”

“Not allowed? What, somebody slapped a super injunction on you?”

“No, it’s not – just leave it, Lena.”

But Lena had by now had more than enough of people telling her to leave. “Whatever it is, you can tell me, Hana. It’s obviously about me.”

Hana sighed and looked down at her phone, a nervous habit of hers. After a few seconds of contemplation, she grit her teeth and decided to go for it.

“You remember your date with Amélie?”

Lena had not been expecting that of all questions. “Uh, not very much. I slipped on the ice and hit my head like twenty minutes in, she had to help me home. It obviously didn’t go well. She hasn’t called me since.”

Then, of course, there was the girl from Tour’s accusation…

“The thing is Lena, I was there.”

“There? In the landscape garden?”

“No. In your room. And you were asleep, and Amélie was there, and she told me you’d stayed up too late the night before playing videogames and was too tired to do a proper date.”

“But… but I didn’t.”

“It wasn’t a great lie. Maybe she just didn’t want me to know that you slipped on the ice, if that really is what happened. But Lena, she threatened me not to tell.”

“To tell people that I slipped on the ice?”

“No, you muppet!” Hana growled. Lena was surprised to see genuine concern in her face. “That I found an article about her in some obscure French local paper. I did some digging –”

“You always snoop on your friends’ dates backgrounds?”

“No, but – but Lena… you have to see this.”

Hana took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it over. It was a print screen from the webpage of a French newspaper, which had been poorly translated automatically by Google, but still said the very thing that made Lena’s skin crawl.

_MEMORIAL HELD AT GRAVE OF LOCAL BOY ON ANNIVERSARY OF MURDER_

 

“I mean, it’s not proof. She wasn’t found guilty. But… but it’s still so suspicious. And the way she got angry at me, Lena. It was frightening. She was like another person. Threatening. I was so worried about you, I didn’t know what she might be doing to you, but you’ve been kinda down – or different, I don’t know exactly – lately and I thought she might have… I dunno.”

Hana was clutching her phone like a lifebelt. Lena was clutching the paper like a death warrant.

She was missing a piece of the puzzle. Missing something. She knew it. She’d hardly heard from or seen Amélie recently. Not since the date. Had something actually happened? Did it have to do with this boy that had been killed? Had Amélie actually… could she have…

No. Lena shook herself. A jury found her innocent. Amélie was aloof, yes. I little prickly. But deep down there was a nice person. She was scared, shy, but Lena dimly recalled the first twenty minutes of that date, remembered Amélie laughing, flirting, being good company. Surely she couldn’t be some fugitive murderer. She was nineteen, for god’s sake. Lena had seen the picture, hadn’t she, that night on Halloween? The golden-haired boy with his arm around her. A pang of worrying jealousy hit her stomach at the thought, followed by horror. The boy was dead.

“I did know.” She said at last. “Or, somebody told me recently. Some girl on tour said a girl from Annecy went to Overwatch, said that she killed her boyfriend. I’ve been wondering about it all the time, but you know, I’m busy, and Amélie hasn’t been around for weeks.”

Was she okay? Lena thought suddenly. It was true, she hadn’t even seen the curtains across the road twitch for a while. Hadn’t heard Angie or Mei mention that Amélie was at a BakeSoc meeting or in the med school. Lena hadn’t bumped into Amélie at the library or in the Watchpoint. Could she just have disappeared?

But the morning rush began before Lena and Hana could talk about it too much more, and the shift was over too soon. Lena had lectures to get to. Classes to worry about. Exams coming up. Lúcio’s mum. The trial. And now, Amélie’s disappearance.

She was distracted in Professor Winston’s lectures. Normally she sat near the front and paid attention, asking questions and taking notes. Lena Oxton would never be called lazy. But today her brain was so clogged with thoughts that she drifted off.

“Lena? Lena, are you even listening?”

The words, familiar and alien, hit her like cold iron to the chest. She jumped up out of her seat, clutching her chest, disoriented in time and space for a second. A couple of people around her snickered behind their hands as she realised she was still in the Tekhartha Mondatta memorial lecture theatre, and Winston was asking her a question.

Yet for a second, it had been a completely different voice asking her – _are you listening?_

“Sorry, prof.”

Winston squinted his cataract-covered eyes at her, concerned. “See me afterwards, please.”

Her stomach sank, though Fareeha gave her a comforting arm squeeze from the next chair down. It marvelled Lena how that girl managed to deal with all her own problems and still have energy to comfort others.

When the lecture was over, Fareeha offered to hang back and wait, but Lena told her to go and save a seat for her in Maths for Dumb Engineers after their short break. She mooched around while Winston took questions from students, dread mounting, then finally braced herself for a telling-off.

“Are you okay, Lena?” He asked.

This was not what she had been expecting. Lena thought for a minute about saying that she was fine. That her head wasn’t bursting with worries and questions, that her sleep wasn’t regularly disturbed with strange nightmares, that she didn’t understand what was happening to her and her friends. But the hairy professor was looking at her with such concern and suddenly she knew that if she didn’t talk to somebody – however stupid she’d sound – she might go mad.

“No, not really.” She admitted.

“Not for a while now, I think?”

“Yeh.” She looked down at her feet, ashamed.

“Chin up, Lena. Let’s go have tea.”

“Tea? But I’ve got Maths for Dumb Engineers in fifteen minutes.”

“Which is why we’re going via Professor Vaswani’s office to beg her indulgence, just this once. Come on. Professor Amari is meant to be dropping off some wonderful Darjeeling for me.”

Mystified, Lena followed Winston up into an area of the Atlas building she rarely frequented – the academic offices. It was funny to see these small rooms, some single but others shared between multiple professors in a department, all personalised, messy, and stuffed with paperwork and filing cabinets. They passed Professor Vaswani’s office, which was notable for its incredible tidiness and Spartan minimalism. She was gathering up papers into a folder, ready to teach, and Winston just pointed at Lena and held up a hand to say ‘I’ll have her for just five minutes’. Professor Vaswani nodded politely and let them be on their way.

“Come on in, sorry about the mess.” Winston’s office was small and cluttered, but Lena preferred it infinitely to Professor Vaswani’s. A mobile of the solar system hung from the ceiling. Model space shuttles and aeroplanes covered the shelves. A framed photo of Winston and an old man who could be his father outside the NASA HQ in America hung by his desk. He sat down and indicated for her to do the same, taking off his glasses and polishing them with his shirt.

“Athena, boil the kettle please.”

The electric kettle on a side table clicked on and began to hum. As if summoned by the imminent possibility of tea, a knock came at the door and Professor Amari of internet and cross-campus fame stepped in with a tin of teabags and a very battered leather handbag.

“Good morning, Winston.”

“Morning, Ana. We have a guest today.”

“Pleased to see you, Lena.” Ana gave her an indulgent smile, her weather-beaten face wrinkling as she did so. She pulled up the remaining chair and sat, passing Winston the teabags. “Present from one of my old regiment.”

“As long as it’s not that awful seaweed stuff you go me last time.”

“That was matcha, and it’s brewed as a delicacy in Japan.” Amari looked mildly offended by his slight at tea. “But this is a lovely Darjeeling, musky, fruity. Don’t you dare put milk in it, you heathen.”

It was strange to hear Prof Amari speaking like this, but Lena decided she liked it.

“And what brings Lena here today? Surely not a bad test mark. Fareeha tells me Lena is always – somehow – top of the class.” She winked and Lena blushed.

“Just a little chat. Lena, we can talk in private if you want.”

“No – no, it’s okay. Actually, I think Prof Amari might want to hear it too.”

“Okay. That’s good to hear. Whatever you want to say, we’re here to listen and treat everything privately. After all, we care about our students a great deal.”

Lena had several false starts, taking a breath in to start speaking until the feeling of shame and stupidity snapped her mouth shut. After a while Prof Amari began to brew the tea, the smell of it filling the room.

“I’m worried about… well, a lot of things. About my friends, that I can’t help them with their problems. About my studies, too. But mainly, I’m… well, do you know Amélie Lacroix?”

“Ah.” Ana stopped mid-sip and set her teacup down on its saucer. “I do, in fact. I suppose you found out?”

“Yeh. Me and my colleague at the Watchpoint.”

Ana sighed and looked down into her cup. “Well, it’s taken a good few months. Longer than I thought. But I suppose somebody would always find out.”

“So you knew? When you accepted her, that she – well, that she was on trial for –”

“I’m actually intimately familiar with the case. Stefan Lacroix was a brilliant, internationally-renowned heart surgeon. I met him and his brother at several conferences over the years, found them to be lovely people. When his own daughter was born with Tetralogy of Fallot, it was a blow to the medical community. A cruel irony of fate, we thought. Children with Tet don’t usually do so well.”

“I recall reading about that in the papers,” Winston added pensively, “But they fixed her, didn’t they?”

“The grandfather did it. Jacques Lacroix was one of the pioneers of Tet repairs. It was his last surgery, to save his granddaughter.”

“A great moment in medical history.”

“Indeed it was. We kept in touch, myself and Stefan, for years after that. I’d met Amélie before, when she was little – I doubt she remembers me. Always a frail girl. When the scandal broke with her boyfriend, I couldn’t believe it. After the trial, Stefan begged me to help her get away from the black cloud of what happened. Her application was solid, so I did an old friend a favour and accepted her at Overwatch so she could lie low for a while, recover from the ordeal.”

Lena couldn’t help asking the question. “But you don’t think she did it?”

Prof Amari snorted quietly and shook her head. “Absolutely not. I hate to be in agreement with that delusional slime Griffe, but she couldn’t have. Not only was she a lovely girl – wouldn’t hurt a fly – but she was too weak. Her heart valves were leaking by then, a common complication years after a Tet repair. She wouldn’t have had the strength to hurt that boy. He was big and strong. She, frail.”

Ana’s words reassured Lena, coming from a woman she knew to be both honest and very capable. But something was still sticking out for her.

“Griffe. Who’s that? He wasn’t in the article.”

“He is.” Ana said, taking the paper from Lena’s hand. “See? Here. But this has been google translated automatically. It’s translated Griffe too. It means claw, or… talon.”

“Bit of a scary name. I had a dentist called Dr. Paine as a kid.”

“Oh, Griffe’s not scary. He’s the laughing stock of the medical community. His early work in psychiatry was promising, but then he started this whole pharmaceutical-assisted hypnotherapy project. It’s the stuff of sci-fi. He kept asking for grants, saying it could help cure PTSD and all that nonsense, but his studies weren’t promising. His biochemical justifications were… well, exaggerated.”

Something terrible was happening in Lena’s mind. “So his studies were about hypnosis?”

“Not exactly.” Ana pursed her lips. “He’d gone beyond that by then. No, Griffe was more about… brainwashing.”

“What’s got you asking about this, Lena?” Winston asked, his bushy brow wrinkled. “And how do you know Amélie?”

Lena found herself, impossibly, blushing. “She and I… um… well, I dunno really what to call it. We went out once after hating each others’ guts for months. And I was there when she was injured on Halloween. She’s been nowhere I can see for a while. I’m worried about her.”

“Has she been in your lectures, Ana?” Winston asked.

“Like clockwork. Turns up, works hard, leaves. Never an assignment late, never a test below ninety percent. She’s a model student.”

“That’s so strange.” Lena muttered. “She lives in the room directly across the road from mine. I haven’t seen her leave or arrive, or any light behind the curtains that are always drawn. Nobody’s seen her in her club, or across campus.”

“That is strange. I’ll see if I can just casually enquire after her health next lecture, check in, make sure everything’s okay. Oh, and Lena – and Hana too, if you can tell her – I beg you to keep what you know quiet. That poor girl has suffered since she was born, body and soul. The last thing she needs is everybody finding out what drove her away from home in the first place.”

“I won’t tell a soul. I promise. I just want to know if she’s okay.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you. I get it must be busy now, with the trial coming up and everything.”

“Well, Fareeha has Angela to help her. I’m so pleased for the two of them. My daughter’s found a medical student! At least somebody in the family will follow in my footsteps. If they last, that is. Not that I’m planning their marriage already or anything. The bridesmaids will be in sky blue. I’ve written my speech.”

She gave Lena a cheeky wink and made a ‘shush’ gesture.

“Is there anything else you’d like to talk about, Lena? Anything to get off your chest?” Winston asked kindly.

“Nothing that I can really do anything about, Prof. Just gotta get through I guess. But thanks for listening.”

“Any time. My door is always open. Except when it’s closed. And locked. At night when the whole building is locked, I mean. And during the holidays. But –”

“I think Lena understands, Winston.”

“Right. Anyway, if I keep you from Professor Vaswani any longer I’ll be getting very neat but incredibly angry post-it notes on my door for weeks about interfering with her teaching process. So get along and take care, Lena.”

“Thanks, Prof. And you too, Prof Amari.”

“Stay safe, dear.”

Lena shouldered her bookbag and left the office, just making it into the back row as Professor Vaswani began to verbally attack them with mathematics. She no time to think about anything else, much less to ponder the crazy, crazy idea that Prof Amari had given her over tea earlier, until the evening.

She was lazing in the living room with Angie and Fareeha, who were both exhausted after their days too. Lena had showered after Athletics and was totally down to hang around in silence, working her way through Professor Vaswani’s problems from class that day. The television was on low, showing the twenty-four hour news station. The demolished building in Rio was making the headlines. Lena had the remote control on the arm of her chair, ready to change it immediately if Lúcio came down.

Fareeha was lying in Angela’s lap, enjoying having her hair played with, dark circles of worry under her eyes. Angela was multitasking, doing the aforementioned hair-stroking with one hand and reading _The Bluffer’s Guide to Endocrine Disorders_ with the other.

“Guys, can I ask you something crazy?”

“No, I did not steal your crumpets from the kitchen cupboard last week.” Fareeha said with the immediacy of somebody who definitely stole Lena’s crumpets from the kitchen cupboard last week.

“No, not about crumpets. Do you think that brainwashing exists?”

“Brainwashing?” They said in unison.

“Yeh, you know, like ‘Look at this pendulum and you’ll do what I tell you’ kinda stuff.”

“I defer to the medical student girlfriend on this one.” Fareeha said.

Angela smiled at her and patted her head. “Well, there’s certainly been many studies on hypnosis as a tool for psychological manipulation. But most everybody agrees that only those who are willing can be hypnotised. As for brainwashing, the only kind I can think of is that conversion ‘therapy’ that some hate groups use to ‘change’ peoples’ sexuality. You know, the ‘gay cure’ camps.”

Lena shuddered. How could you do that to a person?

“And does it work?”

“Well, that depends who you ask. The scientific community generally say no, that all it does is make people associate homosexual urges and thoughts with pain and derision and torture, which makes them averse to expressing their sexuality. It doesn’t turn them straight. It just makes them too afraid to be gay.”

“So you think there’s no such thing as brainwashing, then?”

“Hmm. I’d look at the data or any examples if you gave them to me and see if anything credible was achieved, but no, I guess I don’t.”

“And you, ‘Reeha?”

“I think there are lots of ways to change peoples’ minds about things. Make them think a certain way. Look at how extremists and terrorists target vulnerable people and convert them. I’d say that’s as much brainwashing as anything.”

“You’ve got a point, _leibling_.” Angela admitted. “Is that what you were talking about, Lena?”

“Sort of. But more like something drastic. Changing somebody’s personality. Making them a different person.”

“Then no. I don’t think so.”

“Me either. You are who you are.”

“And you are wonderful, my darling.” Angela planted a sickeningly cute kiss on Fareeha’s nose.

“Ew, guys. I’ve got diabetes just looking at you.”

“Ah, whatever Lena. And anyway, what about you? You can’t tell me that Lena ‘#TogaBooty’ Oxton doesn’t have a girl lined up right now.” Fareeha winked at her.

Perhaps it was because her thoughts were so full of concern for Amélie at the moment. Perhaps it was because she wondered how that date would have gone if it hadn’t been mysteriously cut short. Perhaps it was how tired she was, or how cute Angela and Fareeha looked curled up together on that sofa. But the only girl Lena could think about right now was-

“Amélie.” She blurted out.

Fareeha sat up so fast that she knocked Angela’s chin with her head and gave her a fat lip. “No way.”

“Amélie?” Angela asked in surprise. The med student might have bedside manner so impeccable that she could probably convince a patient that their guts weren’t literally hanging out of their belly when they were on the operating table, but she couldn’t hide her surprise. “That’s… an odd coupling.”

“I know. I know. It’s just…”

“I thought you hated her.” Angela said.

“I thought she hated you.” Fareeha muttered.

“Yes. Well, no. Possibly. I don’t know. We went on this date-”

“YOU WHAT, LENA AGNES OXTON?”

“It was in January –”

“I HEARD NOTHING OF THIS!”

“Yeezus, ‘Reeha, pipe down. Man needs his shut-eye.” Came a disembodied voice from the downstairs toilet. The door creaked open to reveal Jesse McCree, sitting on the lid-down toilet in a poncho and a pair of boxers, curled in a blanket.

“Jesus Christ Jesse! Do you ever sleep in your room?”

“I would, but the mice infestation’s kinda bad in there.”

“I- you know, we’ll deal with that later. Go nap in the bath. You’ll ruin your coccyx on the toilet.” Angela ordered him. He yawned, stretched with frankly worrying popping noises of all his joints, and ambled upstairs with his blanket.

“What does he even study?”

“Don’t try and change the conversation, Lena. You went on a date with Amélie?”

“Yeh. She came by the Watchpoint and asked me out. We walked around the landscape gardens. But I –” Lena decided quickly that now was not the time to go any deeper into her growing suspicions, “I slipped on some ice by the fountain and hit my head. She took me home safe then took off. Guess I wasn’t a great date.”

“ _Gott_! Lena, why didn’t you come to me? I could’ve at least made sure you were okay. You shouldn’t sleep with a concussion. Even as a first-year, Amélie should know that.”

“She stayed to make sure I was okay. She even left a note for me, telling me to lie down and rest. I think. It was sort of cryptic.”

But Lena realised it wasn’t cryptic at all. She hadn’t even thought about the strange note, scribbled in a child’s handwriting on her notepad. _Lie_. It had never meant lie down and rest, had it? Amélie had been telling her that it was a lie. Slipping on the ice. But why would she tell her? It made no sense!

“Well, maybe you should call her. Get a second date. If you really like her, why not?” Fareeha said in her simple way.

“It’s not quite that easy, ‘Reeha. She… well, she has a lot going on.” _Understatement of the year_. “I think she needs to deal with some stuff right now.”

“She seems fine in lectures. I see her around the medical school.” Angela said.

“Exactly. If you want to, ask her out, Lena.”

“Even if it’d be a good idea – which it isn’t – there’s one problem.”

“What?”

“Finding her.”

“Huh?”

“She may come to lectures, but she certainly doesn’t live across the street any more. She doesn’t come to BakeSoc. So where do I find her?”

“Wait outside lectures and lasso her if she scarpers!” Jesse yelled from the upstairs bath.

“Nobody asked you, Jesse!” Lena yelled back. “Crazy yank.”

“Well, at least they didn’t vote Brexit.” Fareeha shrugged.

“I guess. There’s not much America could do that’s worse than Brexit.”

They all agreed on this.

“So, it’s settled.” Angie said with a glint of mischief in her eyes than made Lena slightly nervous. “We’ll do it as a unit. Pincer manoeuvre. I know the first-years have the #TraumAmari lecture next week on Tuesday. Everybody’s guaranteed to be there. We’ll get her then.”

“You make it sound like we’re lying in wait to wrassle a stalking bush leopard or something, Ange.”

“You’re telling me that Amélie Lacroix won’t be as hard to catch as a stalking bush leopard?”

“I’m saying, it’s kind of creepy.”

“Just think of it as an expression of your affection, Lena. Like they say in English, ‘go get the girl’.”

“That’s not what we say.”

“I’ve heard it on the television. It’s fact now.”

“That’s not how it work- oh, whatever. Sure. Let’s go get the girl. What could go wrong?”


End file.
